546 THE REALM OF WINTER. 



The same authors divide the Arctic lands into three regions, of 

 which one they name it " the Province of the North-West " belongs 

 rather to those undulating Prairies described in Book III. than to the 

 Polar Deserts. The two others are the "Middle or Wooded Region," 

 and the "Barren Landes." The Wooded Region comprehends the 

 basins of the Upper Mackenzie, the Churchill, the Nelson, and the 

 Severn. Hudson's Bay cuts into it on the east with its deep anfrac- 

 tuosities. The navigation of this Mediterranean of the North, open 

 to the currents and to the drift of the Polar ices, begins only in the 

 month of June, to close in that of September ; yet in this interval the 

 obstruction of the ices is so great that it occupies a stout vessel two 

 months to traverse the diameter of the bay. Along the littoral of 

 this sea the soil never thaws below the surface, and it often freezes 

 on the very surface in the middle of summer. 



Like a fierce and despotic tyrant does Winter reign on these 

 shores for from eight to nine months. From the end of September 

 the earth, the rivers which flow into the bay, their affluents, and the 

 chaplet of lakes which connect them with one another, all disappear 

 under a layer of hoar-frost. " The provinces of New Wales and of 

 Maine do not enjoy for a longer period than three months the tem- 

 perature of -f- 11 (centigrades), necessary for the development of 

 vegetation. The southern shores of the Great Bear and Slave Lakes 

 possess that temperature for only two months at the most." It is not 

 until the month of May that the thermometer rises ever so little above 

 zero in the Wooded Region, and that a breath of life passes into the 

 plants. Then only the reddish shoots of the willows, the poplar trees, 

 and the birches attire themselves in their long cottony pods ; the 

 thickets grow green ; the dandelion, the burdock, and the saxifrages 

 nourish at the foot of the rocks ; then the sweet-brier, the gooseberry, 

 and the strawberry put forth their fruity burden ; and above these 

 dwarf shrubs the pines, the larches, the thuyas display all the luxury 

 of their sombre verdure. But at the same time the melted snows 

 have transformed the soil, recently so hard and polished like marble, 

 into peaty bogs, where myriads of mosquitoes swarm an intolerable 



