124 A summer's cruise TO NORTHERN LABRADOR. 



of seals, the Greenland or harp seal is the most fero- 

 cious. 



The summer at Henley Harbor was a very backward 

 one ; the salmon had not yet appeared at the naouths of 

 the bays and rivers ; nor had the cod and their natural 

 food, the capelin, moved in from the deep water. The 

 enormous extent of floe-ice which skirted the coast had 

 lowered the temperature of the sea ; at the same time 

 the ice-fields had prevented any icebergs from entering 

 the Strait. The prevailing winds were cold and easterly; 

 the cold climate, the strong tides and the three-knot 

 Labrador current passing around the cape into and 

 down the Strait of Belle Isle render navigation here 

 uncertain and dangerous. 



June 27. The light southeasterly wind brought into 

 the Strait the fog which had lain all the day previous 

 outside of our harbor, and inland the clouds rested on 

 the hills ; the day being dark and lowery. In the morn- 

 ing some of us rowed three miles up to the head of Pitt's 

 Arm, in Temple Bay, a deep fjord penetrating the high 

 gneiss hills, into which pours, over a stony channel, a 

 rapid trout stream about five yards across. The sandy 

 beach was an ancient sea-bottom containing deep-sea 

 shells.* On each side of the mouth of the brook were 

 two terraces ; on the upper terrace, which was about 

 forty feet above the sea, were two winter houses. I par- 

 ticularly observed the appearance of these houses. One 

 was 21X15 feet in size, the walls of upright, thick boards, 

 the frame of poles ; the flat roof was constructed of poles 



* The shells were Buccinum undatum, a variety with two ribs on the whorls; 

 Saxicava rugosa, My a uddevallensis, Macoina proximo, Serripes groenlandica, 

 Natica clausa, of large size, and a branching po\yzoon, Celleporaria surcularis. 



