NEWFOUNDLAND. 



377 



the sharp edges or slippery surface of the numerous rocks and boulders, and the 

 holes and pitfalls between them. Every step through these woods is conse- 

 quently a matter of great toil and anxiety. In the heat of summer, while the 

 woods are so thick as to shut out every breath of air, they are at the same 

 time too low and too thinly leaved at top to exclude the rays of the sun, the at- 

 mosphere being further rendered close and stifling by the smell of the turpen- 

 tine which exudes from the trees. 



Inclosed in these gloomy woods, large open tracts, called marshes, are found 

 covering the valleys and lower lands, and frequently also at a considerable 

 height above the sea on the undulating backs of the mountains. These tracts 

 are covered to a depth sometimes of several feet with a green, soft, and spongy 

 moss, bound together by straggling grass and various marsh-plants. The sur- 

 face abounds in hillocks and holes, the tops of the hillocks having often dry 

 crisp moss like that on the trees. A boulder or small crag of rock occasionally 

 protrudes, covered with red or white lichens, and here and there is a bank on 

 which the moss has become dry and yellow. The contrast of these colors with 

 the dark velvety green of the wet moss frequently gives a peculiarly rich appear- 

 ance to the marshes, so that when seen from a little distance they might easily 

 be mistaken for luxuriant meadow-grounds, but a closer inspection soon destroys 

 the illusion, and shows, instead of nutritious grass and aromatic flowers, nothing 

 but a carpet of useless cryptogamic plants. Except in long-continued droughts 

 or hard frosts, these marshes are so wet as to be unable to bear the weight of a 

 person walking over them. A march of three miles, sinking at every step into 

 the moss, sometimes knee-deep, and always as far as the ankle, is, it may well 

 be supposed, toilsome and fatiguing, especially when, as must always be the 

 case in attempting to penetrate the country, a heavy load is carried on the 

 shoulders. This thick coating of moss is precisely like a great sponge spread 

 over the country, and becomes at the melting of the snow in the spring thor- 

 oughly saturated with water, which it long retains, and which every shower of 

 rain continually renews. 



The " barrens " of Newfoundland are those districts which occupy the sum- 

 mits of the hills and ridges, and other elevated and exposed tracts. They are 

 covered with a thin and scrubby vegetation, consisting of berry-bearing plants 

 and dwarf bushes of various species, resembling the moorlands of the north of 

 England, and differing only in the kind of vegetation and its scantier quantity. 

 Bare patches of gravel and boulders and crumbling fragments of rock are fre- 

 quently met with apon the barrens, and they are generally altogether destitute 

 of vegetable soil. But only on the barrens is it possible to explore the interior 

 of the country with any kind of ease or expedition. These different tracts are 

 none of them of any great extent ; woods, marshes, and barrens frequently alter- 

 nating with each other in the course of a day's journey. 



Another remarkable feature of Newfoundland is the almost incredible num* 

 ber of lakes of all sizes, all of which are indiscriminately called ponds. They 

 are scattered over the whole country, not only in the valleys but on the higher 

 lands ; and even in the hollows of the summits of the ridges and the very tops 

 of the hills. They vary in size from pools of fifty yards in diameter to lakes up- 



