192 A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 



or " skunk spruce," from its peculiar odor, is a more 

 hardy tree than the black spruce and grows farther 

 north. We have seen it growing luxuriously in Aroos- 

 took County, Maine, but it is rarely found farther south 

 than Mt. Desert. Violets were in bloom, and one or 

 two were new to me ; Ledum palustre was now out of 

 flower, while the Labrador tea {Ledum, latifolium^ was 

 still in blossom, as were the bunch-berry, the mountain- 

 trident, and the golden-thread ; Kalmta glauca was 

 nearly done flowering, and the green fruit of the curlew- 

 berry was of full size ; evidently the short Labrador sum- 

 mer of six weeks had come. 



The rocks about us were syenitic, with numerous thin 

 trap dykes, both vertical and horizontal ; some of them 

 had weathered away, leaving deep vertical fissures ; where 

 the horizontal dykes had disappeared, great blocks of 

 syenite had fallen down, giving a dismantled appearance 

 to the shore. The south side of the harbor ran in rock- 

 terraced heights to an elevation of nearly five hundred 

 feet, the huge rocky shelves falling away seaward as if 

 laid and smoothed with cyclopean hands. Climbing 

 about over these hills was almost impossible ; streams 

 rushed foaming down the ravines, some in sight, others 

 only known by their rumbling, stifled roar under the 

 bowlders concealing their bed. 



We learned that some Eskimos were spending the 

 summer on an island hard by, and we tried to get one 

 to pilot us to Hopedale, but were unsuccessful. Land- 

 ing on another flat islet near by, where this or some 

 other Eskimo, with perhaps his family, had been sum- 

 mering in his tent or tepic of seal-skins, as evidenced by 

 the circle of stones used to weigh down the bottom of 



