Lemmings, 

 Meteorites, and 

 Belugas 



The Labradorian Peninsula. 

 Tundra, Spruce Forests, and the 

 St. Lawrence Valley and Gulf 



When Leif Ericson missed his way home to Greenland from 

 Europe in the year 995 A.D., he came upon a long, grim shore 

 that he called Helluland, or the Land of Flat Stones. This is the 

 earliest date recorded for the European discovery of the North 

 American mainland. According to his later accounts, it appears 

 that he had run into the coast of what we now call Labrador, 

 which is indeed for mile after mile a land of flat stones — and 

 very little else, as seen from the sea. Leif did not land, and he 

 seems to have taken a dim view of the place. Later Norse 

 expeditions went a-viking to and down this coast and penetrated 

 some of its deep fjords, where they found to their utmost delight 

 great forests of straight trees that they needed so much for ship- 

 building and other purposes in treeless Greenland. 



Today, if you fly over Labrador, you will probably sympathize 

 with Leif, for it at first appears to be utterly barren. What is 

 more, behind the rugged, rocky, and everywhere deeply indented 

 coast stretch two forms of desolation that are quite overwhelming 

 in their seemingly lifeless infinity. One is the mighty taiga or 

 spruce forest, a four-hundred-mile-wide belt that goes on and 

 on for three thousand miles, making a great sweep to the south 

 and then to the north, and reaching the mountain barrier of the 

 Rockies just beyond the Mackenzie River. As this country is not 

 particularly mountainous, it is covered to the horizon with an 

 uninterrupted blanket of somber green so dark as to appear 

 almost black under a cloudy sky. The other is a belt of treeless, 

 true tundra lying just behind the coast. This is of even more 

 depressing appearance when seen from the air, for the whole 

 world appears to be covered with a vast, irregular maze of 

 waterways interspersed with meandering curlicues of lowland. 

 This tundraland stretches right around the northern periphery 

 of the province, across the northwestern peninsula from Ungava 

 Bay to the Hudson Bay coast, where it merges with the vast 

 marshes that ring the southern shore of that inland sea. 



Great colonies of gannets — here shown on St. Bonaventure 

 Island — as well as gulls and other sea birds nest all along 

 the Atlantic coast of this province and especially around the 

 Gulf of St. Lawrence, where fish is plentiful inshore. 



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