A FALL HUNTING TRIP. 89 



On reaching the station-house I turned into my 

 sleeping bag for what remained of the night, and woke 

 to find it raining. I went down through the rain to 

 the banks of the Terra Nova River. The dawn was full 

 of the scent of wet woods, for the wind was blowing 

 across the water. To my right the river, broad and 

 peaceful, wound away under the gaunt trestle bridge, 

 between flat green country darkened here and there 

 with woodland ; to the west spread the lake, dotted 

 with rocks at the nearer end. It was pleasant to 

 stand there and think that to the westward lay the 

 centre of Newfoundland, where no man lived, and 

 that, although this is the oldest colony of Great Britain, 

 it is possible even to-day, within eight or ten days' 

 travel of the railway, to walk into almost unexplored 

 country. 



The landscape is covered with a network of lakes, 

 surrounded in almost every instance by woods ; it is 

 intersected by marshes and broken by the knobs and 

 ridges of the barrens. These barrens show great spreads 

 of sulphur-coloured reindeer moss, and a loose scatter- 

 ing of trees, which gather here and there into clumps, 

 or " drogues," of spruce, of juniper, or of birch. Few 

 people have invaded these solitudes. Sportsmen camp 

 there in the autumn, and settlers from Alexander Bay, 

 who come to collect their winter store of meat ; but 

 the latter, for reasons of easier transport, keep as near 

 to the railroad as possible. Prospectors for timber and 

 Indians have lit their fires in some of these wild spots, but 

 though the lumber camps are being pushed further and 

 further into the interior, still a great portion of it remains 

 to-day uninhabited, trodden only by the deer and the 

 lynx, an occasional bear, or coveys of willow-grouse ; 



