CHAPTER XXV 

 CROSSING THE LAKE ITS NATURAL HISTORY 



ALL day long here, as on the Nyarling, I busied myself 

 with compass and sketch-book, making the field notes, 

 sketches, and compass surveys from which my various 

 maps were compiled; and Preble let no chance go by 

 of noting the changing bird and plant life that told us 

 we quit the Canadian fauna at Stony Island and now 

 were in the Hudsonian zone. 



This is the belt of dwindling trees, the last or north- 

 most zone of the forest, and the spruce trees showed 

 everywhere that they were living a life-long battle, 

 growing and seeding, but dwarfed by frost and hard- 

 ships. But sweet are the uses of adversity, and the 

 stunted sprucelings were beautified, not uglified, by 

 their troubles. I never before realised that a whole 

 country could be such a series of charming little Jap- 

 anese gardens, with tiny trees, tiny flowers, tiny fruits, 

 and gorgeous oriental rugs upon the earth and rocks 

 between. 



I photographed one group of trees to illustrate their 

 dainty elfish dwarfishness, but realising that no one 

 could guess the height without a scale, I took a second 

 of the same with a small Indian sitting next it. 



Weeso is a kind old soul; so far as I could see he 

 took no part in the various seditions, but he was not 



179 



