126 Rhodora [JuLy 
in short, I deem rather than otherwise, that it is the land that God 
gave to Cain;’”’! and again on his second voyage, in 1535, he wrote: 
‘‘The whole of the said coast from the Castles as far as here” bears 
east-northeast and west-southwest, ranged with numerous islands 
and lands all hacked and stony, without any soil or woods, save in 
some valleys.” And at the present time the people at Blane Sablon 
insist that there has never been any forest there and that no timber 
exists within four or five miles of the Straits. Yet, the first day I 
saw upon the terraces east of Blanc Sablon such plants as have just 
been enumerated I was convinced that a forest must have been there, 
since these are so distinctly woodland species and so decidedly not 
plants typical of the Arctic barrens and tundra. So my delight can 
be imagined when, crossing with Kidder the tableland east of Blanc 
Sablon, we came upon buried logs in the bog and soon after found 
numerous stumps protruding from the moss. Some of the stumps 
(plate 86, fig. 2), now much crumbled, were still a foot or more in 
diameter and indicated an ancient forest of considerable size. Just 
when this forest lived it is difficult to say, but if it still throve in the 
16th century Cartier did not give a very clear indication of it. Only 
by such indefinite expressions as ‘‘except at Blane Sablon there is 
nothing but moss and small stunted woods” and “without any soil 
or woods, save in some valleys” did he indicate a possible forest cover- 
ing. But here at least was a remnant of the forest which had once 
sheltered Carex Deweyana, Actaea rubra and Viola Selkirkii, though 
at the present time only shrubs or dwarf straggling trees, as described 
by Cartier, thrive on the bleak and wind-swept shores of the Straits 
of Belle Isle; and that the forest was an extensive one and presumably 
once fringed the entire length of the Straits we are safe in assuming 
from the presence at Bonne Espérance, L’Anse au Clair, Forteau, 
Red Bay, and Chateau (as shown by the collections of John A. Allen 
and others) of a relict forest vegetation (sometimes further augmented 
by Onoclea sensibilis, Osmorhiza obtusa, Pyrola secunda, etc.) such 
as abounds on the terraces of Blane Sablon. 
e ‘‘Home” which we had expected back from Battle Harbor 
Saturday night came Sunday evening and we found ourselves sharing 
a stateroom with two professors from the Methodist College at 
1jJ. P. Baxter, Memoir of Jacques Cartier, 86 
86 (1906). 
2? From Chateau oo as far as Brest, west of Blanc Sablon. 
3 J. P. Baxter, 1 
