WAPITAGUN 



for some minutes, and was delighted to see 

 how kindly attentive she was to her dear 

 brood ; suddenly her keen eye saw me, and she 

 flew off as if to dive in the sea." 



Cape Whittle is itself the terminal point 

 of a large island — put down on the maps as 

 Lake Island. Next to this island is Wapita- 

 gun, and the Newfoundland fisherman, as he 

 sails by, points to a great rounded rock on the 

 cliffs of Misstassini — the island just outside 

 — as a justification to him of the name Wa- 

 pitagun, "a whopping great gun," for the rock 

 looks like a mortar or great gun. The deriva- 

 tion is as curious a corruption of words as is 

 that of the old hostelry in London known as 

 the " Cat-in-the- Wheel Inn." The original 

 name was "St. Catherine's Wheel." Wapita- 

 gun is of Indian origin and means cormorant, 

 an entirely appropriate name for this region. 

 This rock looked like a poised boulder left by 

 the last glacial period, but poised boulders 

 less than two or three hundred feet above the 

 sea are unknown on this coast, for the reason 

 that after the glacial period and before the 

 present rising of the coast there was a submer- 

 sion and the boulders were washed by the 

 121 



