LOOKING FOR FRESH TRACKS 



lander counts his catches of trout), sea- 

 trout, grilse and salmon ! 



On all sides the attractions bewilder. 

 Right back of the tiny hotel at Ep- 

 worth, on the gray hills shown in the 

 picture, and singing from topmost 

 twigs of the spruces, robins ten times 

 more numerous than anywhere in the 

 States may be heard during the whole 

 summer, and not merely in the spring. 

 Almost everywhere the forests of the 

 big island are musical the entire day 

 with the notes of myriads of hermit 

 thrushes, that songster with a voice 

 even sweeter than the nightingale's. 



It is so novel, unexpected, full of 

 charm of new experience, interminable 

 and innumerable landscapes brooding 

 in the silences, and as they probably 

 were at Creation — virgin primeval ! 

 How it all grips the heart ! Fiords, 

 islands, stern, blue-black hills in sil- 

 houette amongst tenderest, subtlest ef- 

 fects of dim distance as they are rubied 

 in sunsets or shake night-cap mists 

 from their heads ; queerest local showers 

 amid bursts of sunshine and vanishing 

 and reappearing rainbows, ospreys div- 

 ing hundreds of feet into water after 

 fish and soaring away with prey in 

 talons. And the flowers ! Tangled wiz- 

 ardries of swamp honeysuckle around 

 hundreds of lagoons bordered with 

 dense growths of tamaracks full of 

 moss, the favorite food of the caribou ; 

 glades blue with wood violets and 

 snowy with lilies of the valley, or 

 starred with the blooms of three kinds 



of orchids, and all growing wild ! This 

 is an underdrawn word picture — those 

 blossoms mat thousands of acres, whole 

 hill-slopes and entire sections across 

 the valleys of streams where the air is 

 heavy with their fragrance. It is a 

 land of contradictions and climatic par- 

 adoxes. 



Forest fires leave hundreds of square 

 miles a black desolation, beneath which 

 there blossoms fairly well from the 

 ground into the favoring sunlight. 

 Snow lying all the summer on the north 

 sides of such mountains as Blomidon! 

 Partridges or willow grouse, Canada 

 geese, ducks, wheeling wraiths of 

 mackerel-birds and gulls, shuddering 

 laughter of thronging loons, purest 

 springs of water every few hundred 

 feet, and dozens upon dozens of brooks 

 not even mapped, much less having 

 names, and which have never wet a 

 fish line. And over all, air by the cubic 

 mile, that was never breathed ! Honest 

 natives, hardy, brave, hospitable, un- 

 complaining and generally happy in 

 spite of constant danger of privation — 

 living in tiny homes full of children 

 very often without school privileges ; 

 archaic costumes, and a language of 

 the "live-yeres," which is a queer mix- 

 ture of very bad English and a patois 

 of worse French ; and almost without 

 money, living by barter with the keep- 

 ers of the "shops." Copper coins of 

 Portugal, Mexico, Spain, France, and 

 Germany pass current, as well as the 

 cents of Canada and the States. Post- 



484 





