THE LAURENTIDES PAEK 



lighted your pipe is out before you 

 throw it down. A little carelessness 

 when the conditions are ripe would 

 make of these plains and hillsides a 

 blackened desolation, which the caribou, 

 deprived of their winter pastures, would 

 be forced to desert. 



Nothing can surpass the September 

 colours of this moss-country. The moss 

 itself, ivory-white, gray, lavender, and 

 in the swales green and rusty red, is 

 divided into parterres by the mountain 

 laurel, Labrador tea and blueberry, 

 every leaf of which becomes a perfect 

 crimson flame. Wild currants and goose- 

 berries are dressed in copper and 

 bronze. Upon the luminous yellow of 

 the birches it seems as if the sun were 

 always shining, while here and there 

 among them an aspen shows translu- 

 cently green. The little solitary white 

 spruces, despising change, satisfy them- 

 selves with a flawless symmetry of out- 

 line which makes their sombre black sis- 



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