l6o HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



discovering After piercing through a rising forest fringe for twenty 



^^le so-called ^i^l^^ Cormack reached 'green plains marbled with woods 

 barrens, ' ^ or 



and lakes', or yellow-green with reindeer moss, berry-bushes, 



and thin sedgy grass; and the plains, which were 700 to 800 

 feet above the sea, were studded with rocky knolls some 700 

 to 800 feet above the plains. Spruce-beds three feet high 

 with interlacing boughs, marshes and moss-beds three feet 

 deep, over which the caribou^ alone amongst the larger 

 mammals could travel, lakes like beads upon many strings, 

 and the daily need for venison, more than trebled the distance 

 which he had to go ; and when he was twenty miles from his 

 goal he crossed the granite ridge, some 2,000 feet high, which 

 runs through the whole island from Cape Ray to Belle Isle 

 Strait, and he reached once more a region of steep hills and 

 wooded coastline. Geographically the journey was a success.'* 

 but without But in addition to geographical curiosity Cormack was 

 coioniza-^ inspired by two political aims, in both of which he failed. 

 tion or In the first place, being a colonizing enthusiast, he dedicated 

 ^' himself to the service of his fellow-countrymen, and dreamed 

 of some future trunk road, which should lure men inland 

 and forge living links between the lonely dwellers on the west, 

 east, and south coasts, and that was one reason why he chose 

 a high and dry way where bridges might be dispensed with. 

 But the dream proved illusion, although at one time it seemed 

 about to materialize into a telegraph or railway line. Ulti- 

 mately the telegraph-line, which was built in 1856 from 

 Heart's Content in Trinity Bay to Port-aux-Basques, passed 

 on its winding way from creek-head to creek-head far south 

 of Cormack's trail ; and although, when the first big railway 

 scheme was mooted in 1875, Sir Sandford Fleming, the 

 famous Canadian surveyor, selected a northern variant of 

 Cormack's trail as his route, this route was soon discarded, 

 not because of its difficulty, but because of its utter uselessness. 



* American reindeer. 



2 C. Pedley, History of Newfoundland, pp. 506 et seq. ; John 

 MacGregor, British America, 1832, vol. i, p. 260. 



