A LABRADOR SPRING 
teriors the black marks of fire. The ranges 
beyond, still higher — for no matter how high 
we climbed on the elevated plateau there were 
always summits beyond still higher — showed 
also gaunt trunks, and in places a considerable 
growth of birch and aspen where there had 
probably been a previous growth of spruce. 
Here was an explanation for the absence 
of arctic birds. The region was not arctic, al- 
though from a distance it simulated it perfectly. 
It had originally been clothed with a forest 
in which forest birds had dwelt. Mr. J. A. 
Wilson, the factor of the H. B.C. at Mingan, 
told me that a great fire had swept over this 
region forty years ago, starting hundreds of 
miles inland at the Grand or Hamilton River; 
it had reached the Gulf shore with a front over a 
hundred miles broad. Hind gives the dates of 
several great fires before this. Not only was 
the forest destroyed, but the undergrowth of 
bushes, the low herbs, and more important still, 
the mosses and lichens as well as the peaty soil 
were all licked up by the flames, exposing the 
naked framework of bed-rock and boulder. 
This soil destroyed represented the disintegrat- 
ing work of water in its solid and liquid form, 
46 
