46 AUDUBON, THE NATURALIST 



islands, where Guillemots, Puffins, and Black-backed 

 Gulls were breeding in vast numbers, and managed to 

 anchor safely, in spite of that "ignorant ass" of a pilot, 

 at a wild and desolate point which a recent traveler has 

 identified as the harbor of Wapitagun. 17 July the sec- 

 ond was such a beautiful day for Labrador that Audu- 

 bon went on shore, where he drew this vivid picture of 

 that desolate land in sunshine: 18 



The country, so wild and grand, is of itself enough to in- 

 'terest any one in its wonderful dreariness. Its mossy, gray- 

 clothed rocks, heaped and thrown together as if by chance, 

 in the most fantastical groups imaginable, huge masses hang- 

 ing on minor ones as if about to roll themselves down from 

 their doubtful-looking situations, into the depths of the sea 

 beneath. Bays without end, sprinkled with rocky islands of 

 all shapes and sizes, where in every fissure a Guillemot, a 

 Cormorant, or some other wild bird retreats to secure its egg, 

 and raise its young, or save itself from the hunter's pursuit. 

 The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems to be certain, 

 butterflies flitting over snow-banks, probing beautiful dwarf 

 flowerets of many hues [that are] pushing their tender stems 

 from the thick bed of moss which everywhere covers the gran- 

 ite rocks. Then the morasses, wherein you plunge up to your 

 knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, 

 making one think that as he goes he treads down the -forests 

 of Labrador. The unexpected Bunting, or perhaps Sylvia, 

 which perchance, and indeed as if by chance alone, you now 

 and then see flying before you, or hear singing from the creep- 

 ing plants of the ground. The beautiful fresh water lakes, on 

 the ragged crests of greatly elevated islands, wherein the Red 

 and Black-necked Divers swim as proudly as swans do in other 

 latitudes, and where the fish appear to have been cast as 



17 See Charles W. Townsend (Bibl. No. 234), The Auk, vol. xxxiv, p. 

 133 (1917). 



"Maria R. Audubon, op. cit., vol. i, p. 386. 





