E. B. Delaharre, Ph. D. 129 



promontories, presenting a much broken and indented coast- 

 line; and of the sea, covered often with scattered bergs and 

 ice-floes, and dotted with the numerous islands. 



The interior is said to be well wooded and far from bar- 

 ren, even almost to the northern extremity. But near the 

 coast one rarely see trees of any notable size. At Hope- 

 dale and Nain there are small groves near the mission 

 stations ; but elsewhere we met them only deep in the bays 

 and in sheltered valleys a considerable distance — five or ten 

 miles at least — inland.* Thus, when not entirely lacking, 

 they form an unobtrusive feature in the usual landscape. 

 The low vegetation that predominates clothes the country 

 with a close green mantle, but leaves its shape and natural 

 outHne unconcealed. Inorganic nature reveals herself in her 

 own primeval character, leaving all the strength and charm 

 and variety that she can assume naked to observation. 

 There is little of softness, little of the attraction that vigorous 

 organic life can add ; though the green of the low plants, the 

 grays, reds, and browns of mosses and lichens, the blues and 

 whites and pinks and yellows of the flowers add a suggestion 



* According to Low {loc. cit., p. 31 L) the limits of trees are as fol- 

 lows : "The tree-line skirts the southern shore of Ungava Bay and comes 

 close to the mouth of the George River, from which it turns south- 

 southeast, skirting the western foot-hills of the Atlantic coast range, 

 which is quite treeless, southward to the neighborhood of Hebron, in 

 latitude 58°, where trees are again found in protected valleys at the 

 heads of the inner bays of the coast. At Davis Inlet, in latitude 56°, 

 trees grow on the coast and high up on the hills, the barren grounds 

 being confined to the islands and headlands, which remain treeless to the 

 south of the mouth of Hamilton Inlet. These barren islands and bare 

 headlands of the outer coast, along with the small size of the trees of 

 the lowlands, have caused a false impression to be held regarding much 

 of the Atlantic coast, which from Hamilton Inlet southward is well tim- 

 bered about the head of the larger bays and on the lowlands of the small 

 river valleys." 



