34 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 



all green in Winter with the Juniper Bushes and red in Summer with 

 the large Strawberries and other wild Fruits which it bears. It hath 

 abundance of wild or Beach Pease, which fatten the Cattle very well. 



* * * There is neither Trees (but many Bushes) nor Stones. 

 The Grass is tall, thick and hath a very sweet taste and nourish- 

 ing Property; there is some English Grass, but the other is more pro- 

 fitable, and there is enough to feed some thousand Heads of Cattle. " 



All of the native plants mentioned by Le Mercier, juniper bushes, 

 strawberries (though they hardly color the ground red), and beach 

 pease, grow there to-day. 



With reference to the quotation from de Laet given above, it will 

 be noticed that Le Mercier says, " There is neither Trees (but many 

 Bushes) nor Stones" and that John Rose reported "no wood upon 

 it" in 1633, so by the year 1753 any trees which had formerly existed 

 on Sable Island had, in all probability disappeared. 



Joseph Frederick Wallet Des Barres made a survey of Sable Island 

 in 1766 and 1767 in compliance with orders from the British Admir- 

 alty. In his page and a half of " Remarks on the Isle of Sable, "* we 

 find, "The whole island is composed of fine white sand, much coarser 

 than any of the soundings about it, and intermixed with small trans- 

 parent stones. Its face is very broken, and hove up in little hills, 

 knobs and cliffs, wildly heaped together, within which are hollows and 

 ponds of fresh water, the skirts of which abound with cranberries the 

 whole year, and with blueberries &c. in their season, as also with 

 ducks, snipej, and other birds. This sandy island affords a great 

 plenty of beach grass, wild pease, and other herbages, for the support 

 of the horses, cows, hogs, &c. which are running wild upon it. It 

 grows no trees but abundance of wreck and drift wood may be picked 

 up along shore for fuel. " 



Seth Coleman reported 2 to Lieutenant-Governor Sir John Went- 

 worth on conditions at Sable Island as he found them June 24th, 

 1801, saying, "The soil in general is nearly the same excepting upon 

 the upland, which is principally of a nature to produce Beach Grass 

 intermixed with the wild Pea, and round the Edge of the Pond, there 

 is a finer kind of grass, but much of the same quality, and I discover- 

 ed some small spots of English Grass, and on the boarders of the Pond 

 Vegetables might be raised, if enclosed for Gardens, and 



1 Des Barres, Joseph Frederick Wallet: The Isle of Sable, Survey'd in 1766 

 and 1767. Atlantic Neptune, i. 68 (1777). 

 2 Rept. on Canadian Archives, 91 (1895). 



