192 LABRADOR AND NEWFOUNDLAND. 



been accomplished in sailing vessels with enjoyable results. 

 There is much pleasure in noting the brilliant colors and 

 fantastic shapes of icebergs; in watching the gambols of 

 whales and grampuses; in visiting the isolated bird rocks, 

 which swarm with wild fowl innumerable, and are strewn 

 with their eggs in countless numbers. In this latitude is the 

 home of the seal and sea-lion, and the trysting-place of 

 eider-ducks, whose down brings fancy prices in the markets 

 of the world. And as one goes northward, the Aurora Bo- 

 realis scintillates and blazes in its full hyperborean splendor; 

 sundogs and parhelia light up the sky with rainbow tints ; 

 the days are long, and twilight lingers nearly into midnight. 

 But the coast is bleak and desolate, enlivened by no vegeta- 

 tion, save mosses and scanty grass. Two days out of three 

 are cold and foggy, and unless one's spirit of adventure leads 

 him to make frequent excursions into the main-land, his ex- 

 perience becomes in time a tiresome monotony. 



Upon the main-land there is in places a considerable growth 

 of spruce, and though the cod-fishermen seldom visit here, 

 the tourist may see occasionally the seal-skin " toupiks " of 

 Esquimaux families who have come from their winter quar- 

 ters in the interior down to the coast to catch their year's 

 supply of fish. There is good bird-shooting always, both of 

 land and sea fowl. 



At Henley Harbor, near the eastern entrance of Belle 

 Isle Strait, the curlews swarm in August, and there is a 

 stream that affords good trout-fishing. At Snug Harbor are 

 large trout. In the four rivers that empty into Sandwich 

 Bay, lat. 54, there js excellent salmon-fishing ; also at By- 

 ron's Bay, two degrees farther north. But the ultima tliule 

 of the angler's aspirations is in the waters of the great Es- 

 quimaux Bay or Invucktoke Inlet, lat. 55, which penetrates 

 one hundred and twenty miles into the interior. Fifteen 

 miles above its mouth is Flatwater Eiver. Here, about the 

 middle of the flood-tide, one may take his stand upon a long 

 sand-bar, then uncovered, and catch sea-trout by the score, 



