BEGINS CATALOGUE OF CANADIAN PLANTS 209 



that seemed to have any desire to get specimens for the Museum, 

 and he brought home a few of the larger mammals every year, so 

 that, when I joined, there were no birds, excepting a few large 

 ones, and a few small mammals and these were mostly collected 

 or bought by Dr. Dawson. I had some difficulty in getting cases 

 made for the specimens that I brought to Ottawa and even places 

 for the cases. Still, I persevered with my plants and kept on at 

 the work I had laid out and, when spring came, I had decided 

 to go to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. In the spring of 1883, 

 my son William and myself went to Nova Scotia and we botanized 

 in the Annapolis Valley and I ascended Cape Blomidan and 

 went to Yarmouth, and other places, and Halifax and then went 

 to Cape Breton and hired a rig and went by road all the way to 

 Louisburg, the old French city at the extreme east. After spend- 

 ing the early summer there, we returned to Ottawa and, later, 

 went down to Gaspe, where I had made arrangements with the 

 owner of a schooner to take us over to Anticosti. 



When we reached Gasp6, we found our schooner ready to 

 take us across to Anticosti and, as they were going to fish on the 

 banks, they arranged to call for us at North West Point, about 

 the last of August. My party consisted of my son and myself 

 and two fishermen with a large fishing boat and a light skiff. We 

 started from Gaspe in the morning and ran down the bay to get 

 the schooner. 



As I look back now, I cannot understand why, in my trips, 

 I made so little preparation, when so much is taken to-day for 

 less hazardous journeys. My son, Willie, and I did not seem to 

 have anything with us but blankets and a tent; I remember 

 nothing else. Before we left Gaspe, the men said to me: "We 

 will have to take a mixture of castor oil and Stockholm tar, as 

 the flies on Anticosti are very bad." Of course, I laughed at 

 them, as I had had experience on the prairie and thought nothing 

 of flies. 



After we landed on the beach at Salt Lake and had our things 

 put on the shore, the men pitched the tent and we prepared to 

 camp there for a few days. The land seemed to be a peat-bog, 

 though it was dry, close to the shore, and a few hundred yards 



