ON THE LABRADOR. 69 



sterile than the wildest parts of Newfoundland, a fact upon 

 which Jack always laid emphasis when he lit the camp fire, 

 bemoaning the absence of birch bark, and evidently hold- 

 ing but a poor opinion of a country where, as he said, 

 a man could not " get warm to rights." On the evening 

 upon which we made our camp in the deserted cabin 

 beside the shores of the lake, I took my rifle and went 

 for a stroll on the heights to the south of the outlet. It 

 had rained in the day, and the black flies had been exceed- 

 ingly pressing in their attentions ; but with the evening a 

 wind blew out of the north-west, always a herald of fine 

 weather in the Labrador autumn, the heavy clouds and the 

 sultry airs passed away, giving place to the clear blue north- 

 ern sky. My way led me over a series of ridges which 

 seemed to roll for miles upward to the height of land. It 

 was impossible for hundreds of yards at a time to put down 

 one's foot without crushing masses of purple and yellow 

 berries. The Arctic summer may be short, but it crowds 

 into its brief life a wealth of achievement. To man Labrador 

 is, in all her moods, cruelly inhospitable, but to fur and feather 

 she is during the autumn months a kindly stepmother. As I 

 walked forward covey after covey of spruce grouse rose wild 

 from their feast of berries. A few nights before we had seen 

 and marked down thirty of these birds within two hundred 

 yards of Broomfield's house, and with the aid of a Paradox 

 had lessened their numbers by eleven, being at length driven 

 to desist by the sheer tameness of our quarry. But here, 

 where the grouse had probably never seen man or been 

 startled by his foot-steps, the birds rose at a hundred yards. 

 The reason was soon obvious, for along the height of the 

 ridge the ground was seamed with fox-tracks. 



I had been walking not more than half an hour when, 

 taking a zigzag path up a hillside, I entered a grove of 

 trees and beneath a juniper cut the track of a black bear. 

 Following it, I soon came upon evident sign of its freshness, 



