948 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
[JUNE 16, 1906. 

gardens are cabbage, turnip, cauliflower and rad- 
ish, Solanums, potato and tomato. Various 
legumes thrive during the short, hot summer, and 
cvrrants and strawberries were right at home. 
We were told that few visitors came to Moose 
Post, and that sometimes two or three years 
elapsed without a new face being seen in town, 
and the visitor was then often some one in hid- 
ing. Our standing was not established by the 
clothing that we rigged up for attendance at the 
church service, and if we had appeared at a 
Fifth Avenue church in that sort of an outfit, 
the fire department might have been called to 
put us out. Wake found a pair of blue serge 
trousers at the bottom of the bag, which had been 
nicely creased by his valet before he left New 
York, but in the coat the creases ran the wrong 
way. He also managed to find a necktie, and 
with yellow moccasins and a soft cap, looked 
nct devout. These bachelors always 
of looking desirable on all sorts of 
we men of family caché the 
jaunty, if 
have a way 
occasions, while 

CLAY BANK 
LANDSLIDE. 
carefully and tenderly packed habiliments under 
the first shelter, and go on with things that are 
outlandish, 
On July 31 we started for North Bluff, eighteen 
miles off, on the shores of Hudson Bay. It is 
not much of a bluff, and is uninhabited, but it is 
the site of a beacon that guides the annual 
steamer of the Hudson Bay Company. Low-lying 
marshes, with stunted thickets of spruce and tam- 
arack, make the western horizon. The bluff rises 
a few feet above the water line, and consists of 
shingle and sand arranged in concentric semilunar 
ridges. with a firm salt marsh full of round, 
shallow scoop holes. A few drift boulders and 
much drift wood marks the shores. At low tide 
the receding water leaves a flat hard clay floor, so 
broad that when we stood upon the bluff we 
could not see the sea at all; and when we were 
at the water’s edge at low tide we could not see 
the shore line, four or five miles away. We did 
not dare stay long at the water’s edge at low tide 
for.the formation of the flats was such that l 
feared a bore, and while there was no bore while 
we were there, a perigee tide and good stiff levan- 
ter might make a fellow travel toward high 
ground pretty fast. The tide ran over the flats 
on the rise:about as fast as we could walk com- 
fortably and watch the compass for shore. 
The beach was covered irregularly with vege- 
tation... Low spruces and tamaracks grew up to 
the. beginning of the shingle. The lower semi- 
sircular depressions were filled with wild straw- 
'derries and wild peas growing in such wonderful 
profusion that ,we could pick a mess of green 
peas sufficient for camp use almost from a single 
seat. The strawberries were very large, but the 

NOBODY'S 
LOGS—POTJND FOR GREENLAND, PERHAPS. 
season for, them was nearly at an end. I brought 
home a single strawberry plant, with leaves seven- 
teen inches long, including petioles.~ Bushes of 
red and of black currants grew in detached 
masses on the slopes of the shingle, and there 
were some exquisitely sleek furry patches of 
tares. Perhaps the most interesting feature of 
the vegetation was the growth upon the: barren- 
looking, elevated shingle ridges, of a tall grass 
(Elymus arenarius) with heads of grain that 
would certainly be worth cuitivating upon barren 
sands that are now worthless. The grains were 
as large as grains of wild rice, and of ex- 
cellent flavor. I intended to bring back specimens 
for experimental sowing near New York, but for- 
got it at the last moment, and have written Mr. 
Mowat asking him to send on some of the seed 
later. Judging from my own fields of rye for 
comparison, I would say that this grass ought 
to furnish half a ton of straw and five bushels 
of grain to the acre on land that is now barren 
waste. 
Our last meal before starting up river consisted 
of wild green peas, whitefish and strawberries, 
with tender and crisp wild leeks for a relish, and 
wild roses for a garnish. We wanted to make 
some currant flapjacks with flour from the 
grain, but had no means for reducing it to flour 
of proper consistency. 
The flat shores of Hudson Bay apparently offer 
ideal breeding ground for the Limicolide, with 
nesting places on the shingle, resting places on the 
hard, salt marsh, and feeding grounds on the 
broad flats at low tide. Thousands of these birds 
were in motion about us constantly, and it was 
a sight worth going far to see. As the waters 

LANDING ON HUDSON BAY 
TWO MILES FROM SHORE, 
ever. 
receded on the turn of the tide the flats became 
literally alive with the snipe, and wherever one 
looked there were bunches of the birds flying or 
running. Clouds of peeps drifted past us. 
Greater and lesser yellowlegs kept the welkin 
ringing. Wisps of red-breasted snipe slanted 
back and forth on swift wings, and Hudsonian 
curlew whistled their mellow monotgne. Turn- 
stones busily poked away at the hoies of little 
molluscs and crustaceans, and reluctantly ran a 
few steps to one side to let us pass. The only 
ducks that we saw in the marsh holes were dusky 
ducks_and gadwalls, and the only geese that we 
saw were apparently wavies, but they did not 
stay for close inspection. The Canada geese 
seemed to prefer the river banks to the sea 
shore, and while they were our daily companions 
along the Moose and lower Mattagami rivers, 
none were seen on the shores of the Bay. The 
Indians told us that the Canada geese came there 
in great droves in the spring and autumn, how- 

MUSHROOMS FOR DINNER. 
arriving in spring a few days before the 
breaking up ‘of the ice, and living upon willow 
browse in the thickets. 
An interesting feature was the color of the 
water of the Bay. As the tide rolls in over the 
clay floor it becomes milky white, and so opaque 
that one cannot see beneath the surface at all. 
It is not dirty water, for the clay is too nice 
in quality, and we shall always remember this 
part of our trip as the land of the milky flood. 
On August 4 we reluctantly said good-bye to 
our friends at Moose Post, and began our return 
trip up river, realizing that the summer was end- 
ing just after it had begun. The later season had 
its joys, however. We feasted on blueberries, 
whortleberries, sugar pears, raspberries and cur- 
rants whenever the portages offered opportunity. 
Five-flowered and closed gentians added their 
wonderful blues to the bank colors, and sweetly 
scented ladies’ tresses grew up from the stony 
ground left bare by the summer stage of water. 
Chelonias overhung the; springs, and evening 
primroses made bright, “yellow spots on barren 
ridges. By August 7 the young Canada geese 
and young black ducks were-vin full flight, but the 
whistlers and mergansers could not rise from the 
water until some days later. By August 20 the 
leaves of poplar, birch and hazel were rapidly 
changing to autumn colors. Carolina rails and 
a few teal ducks jumped out of the wild rice beds 
as we pushed through with the canoes. 
Two months and a half were required for the 
round trip, and we could not have made it more 
rapidly with comfort. There were few rainy 
days, and few days with high winds. The prevail- 
ing wind was from the southwest, and the 
