416 LABRADOR 
“The interior is said to be well wooded and far from 
barren, even almost to the northern extremity. But near 
the coast one rarely sees trees of any notable size. At 
Hopedale 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 outline 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 of this, yet in a way 
that never interferes with the stern grandeur of the lifeless 
masses. 
“The more northern landscapes differ from those thus 
far described mainly in the facts that the greater heights 
attained lead to grander impressions of massiveness and 
strength, and involve greater ruggedness and variety of 
form; and that the softening influences of soil, water, and 
vegetation are present to a far less degree. ... Plant 
life is still abundant on the lower levels, but finds little 
hospitality on the bleak higher slopes. . . 
“The great mass of the vegetation of Labrador consists 
of low forms. It grows so thickly and vigorously in the 
thin soil, however, that the country never gives the impres- 
sion of being lifeless and barren. In the far south, es- 
pecially on moist lowlands, sphagnum is often a prevailing 
growth. But aside from its rather rare supremacy, almost 
everywhere we went we found the curlewberry (Empetrum 
nigrum) and the so-called caribou-moss (Cladonaa, really a 
