66 THE LIFE OF FHILIP HEXRY GOSSE. 



The second day was far more laborious. In many 

 places the snow was several feet deep ; the foot on being 

 set down would sink to mid-thigh, and had to be slowly 

 and painfully dragged out for the next step. Seven hours' 

 hard walking only accomplished, by Joe's estimate, five 

 miles. The over-exertion produced symptoms of distress 

 in the physical frame of the young man, and he was 

 utterly exhausted when they reached a second and much 

 poorer tilt. They were now about half-way across the 

 isthmus. The third day was more pleasant. The weather 

 was fine, the snow tolerably firm, and the elasticity of youth 

 began to respond to the necessity. A remarkable character- 

 istic of the interior of Newfoundland is a multitude of lakes 

 or ponds, mere dilatations of the rivers and rivulets ; they 

 occur in succession, like links of a chain, or like beads on 

 a string. These were now hard frozen and snow-covered ; 

 but their perfect level, and the comparative thinness of the 

 wind-swept snow upon them, induced the old trapper to 

 select these expansions of Rocky River and its tributaries 

 wherever their course would admit Some of the larger 

 ponds were several miles in length, and were often studded 

 with islets clothed with lofty hard-woods, such as birch and 

 w^tch-hazel, forms of vegetation not met with near the 

 coast This country the young man pictured as probably 

 full of beaut)' and variety in summer. 



Old Joe was communicative, and in his capacity of 

 furrier and trapper his experience was interesting. He 

 pointed out some large rounded masses of snow at the 

 head of one lake, which, he said, covered a beaver-house 

 whence he had drawn many beavers. In other places he 

 pointed out otter ^or, as he pronounced it, "author") 

 slides, always on the steep slope of the bank, where the 

 water, even throughout the winter, remained unfrozen. 

 " These slides," says my father, " were as smooth and 



