8o LIFE AND NATURE IN SOUTHERN LABRADOR. 



the Esquimaux River, going up some six miles from its 

 mouth. From a hill-top I could look over the surface 

 of this lake-dotted land. The surface was rugged and 

 bare in the extreme. The river valley, however, was 

 well wooded, the spruce and birch perhaps thirty feet in 

 height. Here and there the river passed through high 

 precipitous banks of sand. The hills were rough, scarred 

 with ravines, precipices, and deep gaps, the syenite 

 wearing into irregularly hummocky hills, the rough 

 places not filled up with drift, and thus the contours 

 tamed down as in New England. Indeed, Labrador at 

 the present day is like New England at the close of the 

 ice period or at the beginning of the epoch of great riv- 

 ers, before the terraces were laid down and the countr)t 

 adapted for man's residence. Labrador was never 

 adapted for any except scattered nomad tribes. It is 

 still an unfinished land. 



While the hills were bare and the rocks covered with 

 the reindeer moss, here and there by the river's edge in 

 favorable, protected places were tall alders and willows, 

 with groups of asters and golden rods. Here I saw a 

 veritable toad, and glad enough was I to recognize his 

 lineaments. I was also told that there were frogs in ex- 

 istence, though we never saw or heard them. There are 

 no snakes or lizards, so that our history of these animals 

 in Labrador will be as brief as that of the Irish historian, 

 but we did find a small salamander at Belles Amours in 

 a later trip to this coast. 



On our return we found that a whaler had towed a 

 whale into the mouth of the river and was about to try 

 out the oil. We secured a piece of the flesh, and on 

 reaching camp boiled it; it was not bad eating, tasting 



