84 NEWFOUNDLAND 



" ' What's those ? ' I ses. 



"'Well — er,' ses the Devil, a rubbin' his chin, 'those is 

 Newfoundlanders. They're too d — d green to burn, so I'm 

 jes' dryin' them off a bit.' " 



Mr. Whitman, the manager of the Glenwood mills, told 

 me that the large steamer would be at my disposal next 

 morning, so we obtained a trolly, and the men soon pushed 

 the outfit down to the Gander Lake, about a mile and a half 

 away. It was a delightfully hot autumn morning as we 

 steamed slowly down the beautiful lake. 



Gander Lake is one of the largest sheets of water in New- 

 foundland, ^^ miles long. Away to the north stands the fine 

 mountain of Blue Hill, surrounded by dense woods, contain- 

 ing the finest trees in the island. The lake was exceedingly 

 low — so low in fact that even the flat-bottomed steamer had 

 some difficulty in making her way into deep water. 



"Suppose you know every stone in the lake," was my 

 first remark to the captain. 



" Yes, that's one of them," was the reply, as we simul- 

 taneously measured our length on the deck of the steamer. 

 A big rock had caught us when going full speed astern and 

 created this slight diversion. It took about ten minutes of 

 poling and shoving, with engines going full steam ahead, 

 and then we were under weigh again. In four hours we 

 reached the mouth of the North-West River, which debouches 

 into the lake amid a crowd of beautifully-wooded islands, 

 covered with timber, and intersected with channels. Here a 

 Frenchman named Frank de la Barre came aboard, having 

 received instructions to meet me and pilot us up through the 

 islands on the following day. 



Frank had been in the Newfoundland woods for fifteen 



