THE JOURNEY

We left Bonne bay on August 29, and ascended to the high plateau that lies to the north of the bay by a landslide, or "scrape," to use the local expression, of over 1,000 feet in height, of exceedingly slippery blue slate, on which it was difficult to obtain a foothold.

The weather was clear end warm. The summer had been an exceptionally hot one, many days over 90F in the shade, and although the approach of autumn was already beginning to make itself felt, the lowlands were carpeted with flowers and with a profusion of berries.

On August 31 we crossed the watershed. We could see south as far as the Topsails, the hills over which the railway passes on its way to the Grand pond; whilst to the north-east there lay before us a long succession of small lakes, or ponds, as they are called in Newfoundland. The first of these the men knew as the Stag pond. Its sides were covered with the blue flag, and with a species of lily called the beaver root, constituting the chief food of the beaver, which the Indians say is good for consumption. Michel told us that in the Stag pond one of the branches of the Humber rises.

On September 1 and 2 our course took us over broken ground, ridge after ridge of low hills, with intervening lakes. Up to this point we had met with nothing but hard granite and syenite, with no sign of mineral in it.

On September 3 we crossed the Humber, the northern branch of the river. In the old maps it is depicted flowing in an almost straight line from a big lake at the back of Doctor's Hill, a considerable way to the north of Hawke's bay. The existence of this lake was based mainly on conjecture, and in the more recent maps it was left out altogether, the source of the Humber being taken to be Adie's pond. Prof. Jukes, writing in 1840, mentions, however, that the Indians said that "the Humber flows from two large ponds on the eastern flank of the long range, about in the latitude, or as they expressed it, at the back of Cow's Head." This, Michel said, was actually the case, that there are really three sources - one in Adie's pond; one in Stag pond, where we had already met with it; and the one we were then crossing, which rises in a pond at the back of Cow's Head. There is, as a matter of fact a large lake in the interior, which Michel had once visited, but it lies a good deal to the south of where it was placed on the old maps, and is where I have placed it on the accompanying map. The Humber is not connected with it in any way, but it drains into either Cat Arm or Harbour Deep; Michel is not sure which, but be thinks into Harbour Deep. He canoed all round it, and called it the Lake of Three Hundred Islands, from the immense number of small islands with which it is studded. He calculated that it is rather over 20 miles in length, and from 10 to 15 miles in width. Our march after this took us over thickly wooded hills to the Sop's Arm river, the wood being almost entirely fir, rather stunted, with hardly any spruce or birch. Very few of the lakes of this high Plateau contain fish; either the water is too cold, or the streams issuing from them have high falls up which the salmon are not able to pass.

On September 4 we altered our course for Parson's pond, not having time to go on to the Sop's Arm Steady, as we intended. The morning was misty, we could hardly see 20 yards ahead of us, and the walking was difficult, the toil of forcing a way through the thick undergrowth being very great. We rose gradually to a broad, fairly even barren, with here and there a curious saddle-backed outcrop of granite, generally from about 100 to 200 feet in length and 10 feet in width at the base, terminating at the top in a sharp ridge - a curious formation for which we were unable to account. There was evidently much iron about, for the compasses swung a good deal.

On September 5 our course took us over a rocky, moss-covered barren, fairly dry, and with comparatively little bog, and about mid-day we came to the end of the gorge which lies at the back of the upper Parson's pond. It is a deep-cleft ravine with cliffs nearly 2000 feet in height, rising almost sheer, and approaching to within a few hundred yards of each other. Between them winds a long sinuous lake which entirely fills up the gorge, so that the only way through it would be by making a raft. Beyond the lake we could see a low strip of green marshland, and beyond that the azure sea. The atmosphere was of that extra- ordinary clearness which one so often finds in mountains after rain. The hills were cleft by ravines at short intervals, forming flat-topped barrens with abrupt sides, giving them, from the sea, the appearance of gigantic barns; that, doubtless, as Archbishop Howley pointed out to me, being the origin of the French name "La Grange" of this mountain chain, of which the English "Long Range" is probably a corruption.

The sides of the gorge were too steep to be attempted with our heavy loads, and the timber, seen through our glasses, looked too small to make a raft with of sufficient strength to risk ourselves upon it on the lake, as the wind blows like a hurricane through these funnel-shaped openings between the hills. There was nothing for it but to hark back along the crest of the Long Range to try and find an easier descent.

On the 6th, after a stiff climb up and down rocky ridges, we came on a small ring-shaped pond into which a good-sized brook flowed, but to which there was no apparent outlet High cliffs on both sides rose almost perpendicularly and at the other end of the pond we came on a narrow valley shut in by hills on three sides. We clambered down by a dry rocky watercourse, and after a couple of hundred feet of descent came upon a fairly large stream issuing by an underground outlet from the lake above. We found here a few traces of copper and a little pyrrhotite. In the wood at the bottom of the valley the flies, which had not troubled us at all on the uplands, were exceedingly bad, both black flies and mosquitoes. In places the scrub was so thick that we had to cut our way through it with the axes, and finally had to wade down the stream in icy cold water for a couple of miles to a chain of little lakes with a strip of level land between them and the hills, covered with a thick growth of stunted spruce and juniper - "tucking bushes" as they are called in Newfoundland - which, in our tired state, proved more difficult to walk upon than anything we had yet experienced. The branches interlace like a creeper, but are not strong enough to bear a man's weight, and the labour of wading through them, encumbered with a heavy load, is extreme.

On the 7th we came to bigger timber, spruce and birch intermingled with the fir, and a rapid descent by a trapper's path brought us out on the extreme end of Parson's pond, on a soft piece of swampy ground. We edged along the pond to the camp of the Newfoundland Petroleum Company, where Mr. Powell, the manager, kindly put us up. The company has three boreholes on different sides of the pond, each over 2000 feet in depth. The oil is of good quality, but as yet the supply is scanty. The rocks here are stratified rocks, mostly sandstones and limestones belonging to one of the older geological formations.

On September 8 an exceedingly trying march over boggy ground, into which we sank over our knees in the soft spongy moss, making walking excessively laborious, took us out to Sandy bay at the mouth of the river, where we put up in a comfortable little fisherman's boarding-house. Unfortunately, there were no sealskin boots to be had, nor were we able to get any until we arrived in Port Saunders. They are quite indispensable for a journey of this kind.

From Sandy bay we followed the government road along the sea- shore as far as the Portland Creek river, where we camped. A French sailor, Alain Ofry, who has settled here, said the soil in places was excellent, as good as any he had seen in his native Brittany. Potatoes, cabbages and turnips all do well. He has a large garden, eleven sheep, and several cows. There is plenty of pasturage for the cattle and an abundance of hay. The soil, it is true, is boggy, but there is a strip, which he took me to see, running along the coast from half a mile to a mile in width, which consists of a dry peaty soil with a clay subsoil of altogether about 5 feet in depth, on which he said almost anything would grow. He told us he had no trouble whatever with the sheep, except from the dogs. He only had a few, but he thought there would be no difficulty in keeping any quantity that might be desired.

The general view in St. Johns is that the country is quite impracticable for sheep, the ground being too wet and barren; but; so far as I was able to learn, both liver-fluke and foot-rot are unknown, and the few sheep that are now kept along the west coast, which is by far the most promising side of the island for sheep, do well, and have no difficulty in getting through the winter, and the exposure makes them grow a remarkably fine and full fleece, the wool fetching a high price. Whether sheep-raising could ever be rendered profitable on a large scale can, however, only be demonstrated by one or two attempts made by practical sheep-farmers smith a sufficiently large capital to ensure a fair trial. If it could be, the market both in Great Britain and in America would be a near and a lucrative one.

It is curious that the original settlers took a much more hopeful view of the question than the present generation of Newfoundlanders, whose attention is devoted almost entirely to the fisheries. Captain Hayes, whom I will again quote, said, " the grasse and herbe doth fat sheepe in very short space, proved by English merchants, which have carried sheep thither for fresh victuall, and had them raised exceeding fat in less than three weekes."

There most certainly is no want of pools, and the constant rain and the great extent of bog land have given rise to the opinion that sheep could not possibly thrive. At the present time there are not 100,000 in the whole island (at the last census there were 78,000), although it is a third larger than Ireland. But in Finland, in which the proportion of water and swamp is even greater, comprising 32 per cent. of the whole, and where the rock formation is of a very similar nature, the number of sheep according to the Times Encyclopedia - the last census was found to be no less than 1,092,490, whilst in Norway there were 1,417,5OO, and in Sweden 1,261,493.

On September 12, from Portland creek we went 4 miles further along the coast to Daniel's harbour, and thence made our way again inland over the same kind of country, marshes and lakes in the low ground (which is there of much greater extent) lying between the hills and the sea. In places we came upon fairly good timber, and immediately under the hills we found a series of long and deep lakes, one of which we had to cross by means of a raft. On the other side we found ourselves immediately beneath the Blue mountain, the Mic-mac name for which, Michel told up is Naskwotchu, or Blue hill.

Our course took us right across it, but unfortunately the day was wet and misty, and five could see but little of the surrounding country, though Michel pointed out the position of the great island-covered lake which he had once visited, and to which his name has since been given by Mr. Howley. In the glimpses of sunshine we could see almost as far as Canada bay, following the north-easterly trend of the Long range, the granitic backbone of the peninsula.

On the other side of the mountain we travelled through some remarkably fine timber to another and even larger lake, where we again had to build a raft. It took us a day and a half to get round to the other side, as there wag a nasty lop on the lake which sent the water right over the raft and delayed us considerably. I should mention that the honour of giving my name to this lake has been conferred on me. From the other side we made our way to Hawke's bay through fairly level and heavily timbered land.

It took us altogether ten days of hard marching to get from Daniel's harbour to Hawke�s bay, and for the last four days we only had half a pound of flour a day each, with tea and a little sugar.

The unbroken silence was profoundly impressive, with the absence both of animal and of bird life. There were, no doubt, great numbers of caribou, for we saw their tracks everywhere; but have never heard them and hardly ever saw them. Prof. Jukes had a similar experience, "Notwithstanding he says, " the abundance of deer in many places I visited, I was never lucky enough to see one alive, nor have I seen more than one recently killed. ' Michel said the deer were, if anything, increasing in number. Nor did we come across any bears, which are still common in some parts of the island. Beavers are practically extinct, and so are wolves, whose place has been taken of late years by the lynx, which is said to have made its way over from Labrador, for it was formerly unknown. As yet the wolverine, or carcajou, so much dreaded by the Indians in Labrador, has not made its appearance. The Canadian hare, which in Newfoundland is called the rabbit, was very scarce, a disease having almost exterminated it during the preceding two years. Bird life also was scanty: we saw no curlew, which are said to have been formerly so plentiful; only a few snipe and twillick, and here and there a few ptarmigan and willow grouse, and an occasional duck or fish-hawk or loon. The only exception was the ubiquitous jay, the Corvus Canadensis, two or three of them never failing to visit our camp in quest of food; and at night we used sometimes to hear the hooting of an owl. The absence of reptile life was even more remarkable; not a snake, or lizard, or frog, or toad. None had ever been seen in the island, until some frogs were imported by a Canadian enthusiast and turned loose near St. John's a year or two ago.

From Hawke�s bay it was a day's march to Port Saunders, where we were at last able to get sealskin boots, the want of which had made the last few days exceedingly trying. As it was, we were able to complete our journey to Flower's cove on the Straits of Belle Isle in comparative comfort. From Hawke�s bay the land slopes gradually down, until in the extreme north it becomes flat and low, not more than 100 feet above the sea-level, and the formation changes from granite and quartzite to a compact cherty limestone with an almost horizontal stratification.

At Port-au-Chois we were kindly received by Captain Laurent who put us up, and sent us across the following day in one of his schooners to Bartlett�s harbour, on the other side of St. John's bay thereby saving us a troublesome march of about 30 miles. The obstacle of the French treaty rights, which stood in the way for so long of the development of this coast, has now been happily settled by the Anglo French Convention, and there is no reason why the French shore should not now be profitably worked, as regards both mines and agriculture, as well as the fisheries, if it be found that such development is practicable.

And although the climate is a hard one - the winter long, and the summer all too short, there is no reason to despair of the success of agriculture even in the northern Peninsula which the Arctic current setting through the Straits of Belle Isle, has rendered less fit for cultivation than the rest of the island. The conditions are not worse there than in Finland and Lapland, where the majority of the population- depend mainly upon the land, and not upon the fisheries, and where, although wheat cannot be raised any more than it can in the greater part of Newfoundland, they nevertheless make a subsistence from oats and rye, potatoes and beetroot, all of which do admirably in Newfoundland, although hardly any of the fishermen take the trouble to grow them.

At Flower's cove we took the steamer back to Bonne bay, and from there walked over to the railway at Deer lake, which we reached on October 15, thus ending an enjoyable and interesting journey.