Outing . n the wood, which became sothick and numerous near the bark thatit was impossible to count them. Dan opined that many of these sprucesand white birches were hundreds of yearsold, and declared that, to his knowledge,one of them on this plateau will notgrow over an inch a year. The reasonsfor this are that the soil is too shallowabove the pre-Cambrian bed-rock and thewinds buffet the woods very a result the thick woods are quitecovered with windfalls (blow-downs,the natives call them), and with scrubgrowth of every kind, the worst beingthe firs, spruces and the maples, the
Outing . n the wood, which became sothick and numerous near the bark thatit was impossible to count them. Dan opined that many of these sprucesand white birches were hundreds of yearsold, and declared that, to his knowledge,one of them on this plateau will notgrow over an inch a year. The reasonsfor this are that the soil is too shallowabove the pre-Cambrian bed-rock and thewinds buffet the woods very a result the thick woods are quitecovered with windfalls (blow-downs,the natives call them), and with scrubgrowth of every kind, the worst beingthe firs, spruces and the maples, the lat-ter sending out their tough brancheshorizontally along the ground like snakesturned to wood, as if with the intentionof tripping the feet of the unwarytraveler. Add to this condition of things that,since the country has never been visitedby lumbermen (these fell gentry destroyonly the beautiful forests!), there are notote-roads or paths of any kind exceptthose of the caribou from barren to bar- [415]. MR. KNIGHT S METHOD OF TRAVEL ren, and that the barrens, or muskegs,are mostly covered with soft moss intowhich the feet sink over the ankles andoften to the knees, and it is easy to seethat there is little rest for the weary inthis God-forsaken region. More thanthat, the many brooks all rise here and,in descending to the plains, form deepgulches that must be crossed, so that pro-gression is apt to be a good deal up anddown. At this time of year the caribou are inthe green woods, and the natives do nothunt them until snow comes and the ani-mals come out on the barrens to feed onthe white moss. In October practicallythe only way to hunt them is to inter-cept them while using their paths fromone piece of woods to another across thebarrens. Nevertheless, it seemed properto stick to the barrens, since the woodswere so thick as to make still-huntingnext to impossible, and so we made di-rectly for the great Cape North Barren,one of the most extensive on the island,in the hope that
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade, booksubjectsports, booksubjecttravel
