ACROSS NEWFOUNDLAND 203 



enjoying our meal of ducks, fish, and tea, we all felt very 

 happy and comfortable. The roaring camp-fire of sticks 

 crackled and shed its grenial warmth. Out on the lake the 

 water was like a sheet of glass, except in a little bay where a 

 mother red-breasted merganser was teaching her young to dive. 

 From the distance came the swan-like trump of the Canada 

 geese, as they returned from berry-picking on the hills, and 

 now and again we could hear the melancholy " who-eee " of 

 the great northern divers as they settle for the night. 



No pen could describe or brush convey any idea of that 

 crimson sunset, or the flood of golden light that bathed 

 the hills, the far-away islets, the tangled woods, and the 

 glassy lake. 



We are led by some invisible hand from the heat and 

 turmoil of life to the beauty of space and the joys of 

 distance, into the cool, green places where no man comes. 



Soon the golden ball sinks beneath the horizon, to be 

 succeeded by a short-lived twilight. The querulous loon is 

 uttering low-voiced calls to his mate, and grey phantoms rise 

 cloud-like in the evening mists, drifting away with clanking 

 voices into a land of silence. It is the day's departure, and 

 we turn to the incense of the larch smoke and the crackling 

 blaze of the burning logs. Then one drops to sleep on 

 a couch of scented "vars," amidst the lonely mountains of 

 the northland, with the starlight overhead. 



It may seem strange to the town dwellers that there are 

 many men so constituted that the luxuries of civilisation 

 have no attraction for them, but it is no mystery to those 

 who have seen both sides of the picture. The outdoor man 

 has by far the best of it, for he leads the life that God and 

 Nature intended him to do. If his disappointments and 

 difficulties are great, his joys are intense, and he feels that 



