A LABRADOR SPRING 
we came to anchor in a lovely land-locked 
harbour among Les Isles des Corneilles, and 
here we spent a most interesting twenty-four 
hours, exploring the low, rounded granitic 
islands and the main land with its salt marshes, 
its bogs, its impenetrable forests and its rush- 
ing turbid river. 
Eiders were everywhere and their love notes 
were constantly in our ears. They were to be 
seen not only on the water, but also on the 
rocks and among the stunted spruce bushes 
of the islands where we frequently stumbled 
on their nests, the large olive-green eggs con- 
cealed in a mass of soft eider down. 
A flock of twenty-eight geese were feeding 
in a shallow pool between two islands, and, as 
I watched them from a sheltered sunny nook 
beside a great snowbank, I listened to the songs 
of the melodious sparrow family as represented 
by the white-crowned, white-throated, tree and 
fox sparrows, all good singers. To the majority 
of people the word sparrow calls up only the 
English sparrow of our streets with its nerve- 
racking chirps! Little do they know how musi- 
cal are most of this tribe and what a great tribe 
it is. 
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