TO ESQUIMAUX POINT 
and of vegetation working through thousands 
of years on the solid Laurentian rock that had 
been left naked and scoured by the ice of the 
last glacial period. The remains of this soil, the 
precious product of so many years, no longer 
protected by vegetation on the steep slopes, 
was soon washed down into the valleys, and 
these rocky hills are now almost as devoid of 
soil as they were when the glaciers melted. 
On the bare rock lichens are again growing 
and disintegration is gradually creeping on 
even there; in the crevices the mosses and the 
herbs and bushes are striving to gain a foot- 
hold, and slowly a soil is being formed, which 
after many, many years will be sufficient for the 
re-growth of the Hudsonian forest of spruce 
and balsam. Verily what a great destruction 
a little fire kindleth! The mills of the gods 
grind slowly indeed in this case! 
Here at a height of five or six hundred feet 
glacial boulders abounded, many of them poised 
on slopes of such an angle that a touch seemed 
all that was needed to disturb their equilibrium 
and send them crashing into the valley below. 
The presence of these boulders shows that the 
land here had never been submerged below the 
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