88 ONE OF FIFTY DAYS IN SOtFTHERN LABRADOR. 



fathoms' mud — a beautiful dredging-ground. Large 

 cockles, curious pelican's-feet, delicate nereids, clumsy- 

 crabs, and neat, active shrimp, abound and multiply as 

 the sands of the sea in number. On the right is Salmon 

 Bay settlement, one of the most populous places on the 

 coast, consisting of seven families. And now the eye, 

 sweeping north, east, and west, takes in the vast desola- 

 tion of hills, relieved only by gleaming fragments of 

 ponds, or snow-banks of a sullen white. There is no 

 continuous series of ranges rising up back of one an- 

 other, like any well-ordered mountain group, but a 

 chopped sea of undeveloped mountains, whose tops seem 

 to have been ground down by water and ice when the 

 world was much younger than it is now, but which, after 

 this, as if a rebel horde of Titans, made seemingly inef- 

 fectual attempts to grow up again, and only succeeded 

 in spots ; which, bare then, have been kept bare ever 

 since by arctic frosts and snows. 



If we imagine we can see forests growing among 

 those hills, it is only because we have been told that 

 woods do grow in the sheltered valleys, and now and 

 then venture up the hill-sides. Thus the country runs 

 back for hundreds of miles, the hills rising five to eight 

 hundred feet high, bare and desolate, but the valleys are 

 much better wooded in the interior of the country, be- 

 ing warmer and more sheltered. There are no regular 

 rivers in Labrador, only rows of ponds — and very 

 crooked rows — linked by rapids, which the Mountaineers 

 only can navigate in their light canoes. There are no 

 water-sheds, no continuous valleys to unite into one 

 stream the thousand ponds that gather in every depres- 

 sion. 



