I know of no country so near England which offers the same amount of inducement to the explorer, naturalist, or sportsman as Newfoundland. To one who combines the advantages of a good practical knowledge of geology with the love of sport the interior of this great island, much of which is quite unknown, may indeed prove a field of valuable and remunerative discovery, for its mineral resources, now under the examination of a Government geological survey, are unquestionably of vast importance, and quite undeveloped. Numerous discoveries of copper have been made at various points, particularly on the western side, and coal and petroleum have been found in the interior. So completely, however, is the population devoted to the prosecution of the fisheries, that even agriculture is unheeded, though there is plenty of good land close to the harbours. Between these, with the exception of a few roads in the province of Avalon (the peninsula which contains the capital of the colony, St. John's), there is no communication except by water.

As a field for sport, likewise, Newfoundland is but little known. Some half-dozen or so of regular visitors from the continent, one or two resident sportsmen, and the same number from England, comprise the list of those who have encamped in its vast solitudes in quest of its principal large game—the cariboo—which is scattered more or less abundantly over an area of some twenty-five thousand square miles of unbroken wilderness.

Like Nova Scotia, the face of the country is dotted with lakes innumerable, some of which, as the Grand Lake (fifty miles in length) and the Red Indian Pond, are of much larger dimensions than any found in the former province. These waters all abound with trout ; and beaver,* otter, and musk-rats, being subject to less persecution, are much more numerous than on the continent. The willow grouse (Lagopus albus) is the common resident game bird of the country, and is exceedingly abundant; and the migratory fowl pursued for sport include the Canada goose, that excellent bird the black duck (Anas obscura), curlew, and snipe. The black bear and the wolf are of frequent occurrence in the interior, and add a flavour of excitement to the varied catalogue of sport.

The following observations and scraps of information collected on several occasions of visits of inspection to the garrison town of St. John's are here presented with a view to their proving of use to the intending visitor in search of sport, or as interesting to the naturalist.

The route from Halifax to St. John's is traversed fortnightly in summer, and monthly in the winter months, by small screw steamers subsidied for the mail service, and is as uncomfortable a voyage as may well be imagined at times, the direction being that of the northern line of the fog, which sometimes envelopes the steamer throughout, or, at all events, until the vessel rounds Cape Race— nearly at the end of the journey. Near the Cape icebergs are frequent during the summer months, and it is not an uncommon circumstance to hear the dull roar of the surf upon their precipitous sides as one passes in uncomfortable proximity in a dense fog. Field ice, too, is another drawback in the spring; enormous areas come down from the Gulf, and more than once the little steamer has spent a fortnight or so enclosed, drifting into one of the wild, inhospitable harbours of the southern coast. The duration of the voyage from Halifax to St. John's is from three to five days—a little longer when, as is generally the case, Sydney, Cape Breton, is touched at. In fine summer weather coasting along the shores of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton is pleasant enough, particularly in the evenings, when the heated atmosphere, blown off from the fir woods, is charged with delicious fragrance. The scenery, viewed from the deck of a vessel passing at some two or three leagues distance, has nothing of especial interest, as might be inferred ; the numerous indentations of the harbours are hardly perceptible, and the wooded country behind rises but a few hundred feet or so in a continuous undulating line of hills. A noticeable rock, which may be seen at a considerable distance out to sea, termed “The Ship," terminates a headland on the western side of the harbour of that name. It looks just like a schooner, or rather brigantine, under full sail.

This part of the North American coast is marked by the presence of multitudes of sea birds, which, at the periods of their annual migrations, afford abundant and exciting sport. Formerly they resorted to the numerous islands of Nova Scotia and Cape Breton to breed. Now, driven away by persecution, the bulk of them go much further to the north-east.

Every fisherman along shore has a fowling-piece, and shoots “sea-ducks,” as he indiscriminately calls a variety of species—eiders, pintails, mergansers, loons, and coots— and when we consider the wholesale destruction caused by the eggers at their breeding-grounds in the Gulf, it is surprising that the birds have not more quickly followed the great auk in progress towards extinction. As has been stated before, there is no record of the latter bird affecting these shores within the memory of those living, though the Penguin Islands (the bird had much resemblance to the true penguin of the Southern Ocean) certainly derived their name from its former abundance.

The Canadian Government have lately terminated the wholesale destruction of sea-birds’ eggs in the Gulf by stringent enactments, and the egging trade is virtually abolished. The wanton destruction which accompanied the arrival of an egging vessel at the breeding-grounds was most disgraceful. Armed with sticks, the crew first broke every egg on the island (tens of thousands.) A partial re-commencement of laying ensued, and the 4 harvest was immediately gleaned with the assurance that the cargo on reaching port would consist of none but fresh eggs. The bulk of the spoil consisted of the eggs of the guillemots, and were sold at about three cents apiece. I have frequently eaten them and found them exceedingly palatable; the white somewhat resembles that of a plover’s egg in appearance and flavour.

The local names of the sea-birds are singular. The beautiful and quite common harlequin duck (Anas his-trionica) is called “a lord:” the long-tailed duck (A. glacialis) rejoices in the name of “cockawee,” from its note, and sometimes the “old squaw" “from the ludicrous similarity between the gabbling of a flock of these birds and an animated discussion of a piece of scandal in the Micmac language between a number of antiquated ladies of that interesting tribe.” The puffin is termed a parrot, and the little auk, the bull-bird. The name of shell-ducks or shell-drakes, applied to the mergansers (more especially to the goosander), is a misnomer prevalent along the whole coast and in Labrador: no true tadorna is found in North America.

In several of the harbours on the Nova Scotian coast excellent sport may be obtained in winter, shooting wildfowl on the ice, for many of these birds remain all winter. Canada geese and brant are shot only during migration. Scatterie, a desolate island lying off the eastern end of Cape Breton, is a great resort of sea-birds of all descriptions, as is also Sydney harbour. Prince Edward Island and the Gulf shore of New Brunswick afford wonderful sport during the passage of the geese.

To return, however, to the subject before us—Newfoundland, its characteristic features and wild sports.

A marked difference of outline to those of the shores of Acadie is readily perceived on approaching its southern coast. The cliffs rise from the sea to the height of some five hundred feet, with a precipitous face and comparatively level summits, forming long stretches of table land. Then the tall arrow-headed pines are missed, and on passing quite close, the vegetation with which the country is clothed appears singularly colourless as well as stunted. A chilling melancholy aspect pervades the face of nature; except for the number of little fishing smacks with which the coast is dotted, we might seem to be passing the shores of Greenland. A few hours before, perhaps, we were in the warm atmosphere, blown with us by a balmy west wind from the fir-covered hills of Cape Breton; now we are faced by a biting north-east breeze which at once reminds us of the chills of early spring on the Atlantic coast. Eounding Cape Race, and we are fairly in the great Arctic current, and most probably within view of icebergs—at least up to the end of August. The water in the early summer is strewn through large areas with floating pieces of field ice, detachments from the great fields which float down the coast in spring, sometimes, indeed, entering and blocking up the harbours for miles out to sea. St. John's harbour has thus been blockaded even in the month of June, whilst the sea to the distance of twenty miles from the shore has been frozen so that a traveller might visit on foot any post along shore within seventy miles to the north-east.

The chilling effect of this proximity to the southern passage of ice through so large a portion of the year is readily perceptible on the vegetation in this part of the island. The stunted character of the deciduous trees (of few species compared with their representatives on the eastern shores of the mainland) and of the spruces, the absence of the broad-leaved maple, with which the continental forests are enriched, and the nakedness of the dull grey rocks, give an air of dreariness to the country, which it seems at first to the stranger impossible to shake off.

From comparative observations I should assign a fortnight as the difference in the progress of vegetation between Nova Scotia and the country round St. John's. On July 14th, the common lilac, long since faded in the gardens at Halifax, was here found in full bloom. On the 18th I observed various Yaccinese, the purple iris, the pigeon-berry, and Smilacina bifolia in flower, and the kalmia just coming out, indicating fully the difference of season already stated.

Although in the interior, and especially on the western side of the island, Newfoundland can boast of forests, but little wood deserving that name appears in the vicinity of St. John's. The wilderness is generally covered with low alder bushes and thickets of white spruce (Abies alba), with a scanty mixture of balsam fir. A few small white birch, willows of several species, and one description of maple (Acer montanum), with the Amelanchier, or Indian pear, and wild cherry, constitute the bulk of the deciduous vegetation. The swamps (of great extent and constant occurrence) are covered with cotton grass, and Indian cups (Sarracenia), and the sphagnum with creeping tendrils of the cranberry. Dry elevated bogs have thick growths of huckle and blueberries (Gaylussacia resinosa and Vaccinium Canadense), with the common partridge berry, Labrador tea (Ledum), and sweet-scented myrica, and open spots are carpeted with reindeer lichen. Empetrum nigrum (locally misnamed heather), on the numerous black berries of which the curlew and wild goose feed, is a very abundant shrub, growing in the open, with patches of ground juniper.

It was probably to the profusion of berries (Vaccinese) that the original name of Newfoundland, given by its early Norwegian visitors—Winland—was due, a country frequently alluded to in Norwegian and Icelandic historical records. The huckle-berries, especially, are so large and juicy that they might naturally have passed for the wild grapes for which the island was said to be famous, and which, it is almost needless to state, do not therein exist.

The birches appear to be the only deciduous timber trees in Newfoundland, for, with the exception of the species already mentioned and moose wood (Abies striatum) —both mere shrubs—neither maple nor beech are to be found. On the western side of the island, where the soil and climate approximate to those of the adjacent coasts of the mainland, the hard-wood forests attain a fine development, affording a plentiful supply of fuel, and wood for manufacture. The yellow birch (Betula excelsa) grows here with a diameter of nearly three' feet, and pine, spruce, and larch are abundant. The scenery of the \vestern coast differs greatly from that of the southern and eastern. St. George's Bay and the Bay of Islands are surrounded by rolling forest-covered hills, and fine woods skirt the Humber river which enters the latter basin, and the great lakes in the interior whence it flows’ With a soil quite capable of yielding abundantly to the agriculturist, the presence of coal-fields, vast mineral wealth, and extensive forests verging on the harbours and rivers, it is surprising that this part of the island is not more thickly settled. The fog, constantly shrouding the southern shores, and often extending for some distance up the eastern, is here of quite unfrequent occurrence, and the easterly winds which chill the soil and retard vegetation round St. Johns, are divested of their bitterness on crossing the island.

Much light is thrown upon the interior features of the main island to the southward of the great lakes by the curious narrative of his journey across from Trinity Bay on the east coast to St. George's on the west, published as a pamphlet many years since by Mr. W. E. Cormack. His account is still regarded as the best description of the interior, of which but little more is known at the present day than at the time of his visit. The journey across the island was undertaken on foot, of course; a single Indian accompanied him, and all the necessaries of life were carried in knapsacks. After difficult progress of some days' duration through scanty spruce forests, he thus describes his first view of the interior:—

“We soon found that we were on a great granitic ridge, covered, not as the lower grounds are, with crowded pines and green moss, but with scattered trees ; and a variety of beautiful lichens, or reindeer moss, partridge-berries, and whortle-berries, loaded the ground. The Nylosteum villosum, a pretty, erect shrub, was in full fruit by the sides of the rocks ; grouse, Tetrao albus, the indigenous game-bird of the country, rose in coveys in every direction, and snipes from every marsh. The birds of passage, ducks and geese, were flying over us to and fro from their breeding places in the interior and the sea coast; tracks of deer, of wolves fearfully large, of bears, foxes, and martens were seen everywhere.

“On looking back towards the sea coast, the scene was magnificent. We discovered that under cover of the forest we had been uniformly ascending ever since we left the salt water at Eandom Bar, and then soon arrived at the summit of what we saw to be a great mountain ridge that seems to serve as a barrier between the sea and the interior. The dense black forest, through which we had pilgrimaged, presented a novel feature, appearing spotted with bright yellow marshes and a few glossy lakes in its bosom, some of which we had passed close by without seeing them.

“In the westward, to our inexpressible delight, the interior broke in sublimity before us. What a contrast did this present to the conjectures entertained of Newfoundland ! The hitherto mysterious interior lay unfolded before us—a boundless scene, emerald surface, a vast basin. The eye strides again and again over a succession of northerly and southerly ranges of green plains, marbled with woods and lakes of every form and extent. The imagination hovers in the distance, and clings involuntarily to the undulating horizon of vapours far into the west, until it is lost. A new world seemed to invite us onward, or rather we claimed the dominion, and were impatient to take possession. Our view extended for more than forty miles in all directions, and the great exterior features of the eastern portion of the main body of the island are seen perfectly from these commanding heights.

“September 11.—"We descended into the bosom of the interior.

“The plains which shone so brilliantly are steppes, or savannas, composed of fine black compact peat mould, formed by the growth and decay of mosses (principally the Sphagnum capillifolium), and covered uniformly with/ wiry grass, the Euphrasia officinalis being in some places intermixed. They are in the form of extensive gently undulating beds, stretching northwards and southwards, with running waters and lakes, skirted with woods, lying between them. Their yellow-green surfaces are sometimes uninterrupted by either tree, shrub, rock, or any inequality for more than ten miles. They are chequered everywhere upon the surface by deep-beaten deer paths, and are in reality magnificent deer-parks, adorned by woods and water. The trees here sometimes grow to a considerable size, particularly the larch; birch is also common. The deer herd upon them to graze. It is impossible to describe the grandeur and richness of the scenery, which will probably remain long undefined by the hand of man, in search of whose associations the eye vainly wandered.

Our progress over the savanna country was attended with great labour, and consequently slow, being only at a rate of five to seven miles a day to. the westward, whilst the distance walked was equivalent to three or four times as much. Always inclining in our course to the westward, we traversed in every direction, partly from choice, in order to view and examine the country, and partly from the necessity to get round the extremities of lakes and woods, and to look for game for subsistence.

“It was impossible to ascertain the depths of these savannas, but judging from the great expanse of the undulations, and the total absence of inequalities on the surfaces, it must often be many fathoms. Portions of some of the marshes, from some cause under the surface, are broken up and sunk below the level, forming gullies and pools. The peat is there exposed sometimes to a depth of ten feet and more without any rock or soil underneath ; and the process of its formation is distinctly exhibited from the dying and dead roots of the green surface moss descending linearly into gradual decay, until perfected into a fine black compact peat, in which the original organic structure of the parent is lost. The savanna peat immediately under the roots of the grass on the surface is very similar to the perfected peat of the marshes. The savannas are continually moist or wet on the surface, even in the middle of summer, but hard underneath. Roots of trees, apparently where they grew, are to be found by digging the surfaces of some of them, and probably of all. From what was seen of their edges at the water-courses, they lie on the solid rock, without the intervention of any soil. The rocks exhibited were transition clay slate, mica slate, and granitic.

“One of the most striking features of the interior is the innumerable deer paths on the savannas. They are narrow, and take directions as various as the winds, giving the whole country a chequered appearance. Of the millions of acres here, there is no one spot exceeding a few superficial yards that is not bounded on all sides by deer paths. We, however, met some small herds only of these animals, the savannas and plains being in the summer season deserted by them for the mountains in the west part of the island. The Newfoundland deer, and there is only one species in the island, is a variety of the reindeer (Cervus tarandus, or cariboo); and, like that animal in every other country, it is migratory, always changing place with the seasons, for sake of its favourite kinds of food. Although they migrate in herds, they travel in files, with their heads in some degree to windward, in order that they may, by the scent, discover their enemies the wolves; their senses of smelling and hearing are very acute, but they do not trust much to their sight. This is the reason of their paths taking so many directions in straight lines ; they become in consequence an easy prey to the hunter by stratagem. The paths tend from park to park through the intervening woods, in lines as established and deep beaten as cattle-paths on an old grazing farm.”

Occupying nearly a month in toiling through the savanna country, the latter portion of his journey being impeded by deep snow, and living in an uncertain manner on deer's meat, beaver, geese, and ducks, Mr. Cormack further writes on approaching the western coast at the end of October :—

“We met many thousand of the deer, all hastening to the eastward, on their periodical migration. They had been dispersed since the spring, on the mountains and barren tracks, in the west and north-west division of the interior, to bring forth and rear their young amidst the profusion of lichens and mountain herbage, and where they were, comparatively with the mountain lowlands, free from the persecution of flies. When the first frosts, as now in October, nip vegetation, the deer immediately turn towards the south and east, and the first fall of snow quickens their pace in those directions, as we now met them, towards the low grounds where browse is to be got, and the snow not so deep over the lichens. In travelling, herd follow herd in rapid succession over the whole surface of the country, all bending their course the same way in parallel lines. The herds consist of from twenty to two hundred each, connected by stragglers or piquets, the animals following each other in single files, a few yards or feet apart, as their paths show; were they to be in close bodies, they could not graze freely. They continue to travel south-eastward until February or March, by which time the returning sun has power to soften the snow, and permit of their scraping it off to obtain the lichens underneath. They then turn round towards the west, and in April are again on the rocky barrens and mountains where their favourite mossy food abounds the most, and where in June they bring forth their young. In October the frosty warning to travel returns. They generally follow the same routes year after year, but these sometimes vary, owing to irregularities in the seasons, and interruptions by the Indians. Such are, in a general view, the courses and causes of the migrations of the deer, and these seem to be the chief design of animated nature in this portion of the earth. Lakes and mountains intervening, cause the lines of the migration paths to deviate from the parallel; and at the necks of land that separate large lakes, at the extremity of lakes, and at the straits and running waters which unite lakes, the deer unavoidably concentrate in travelling. At those passes the Indians encamp in parties, and stay for considerable interval of time, because they can there procure the deer with comparatively little trouble.”

The Indians here alluded to, whom Mr. Cormack. believed to be still inhabiting the shores of the large lakes to the northward of his course through the island, and the remains of whose fences or pounds for snaring deer may be seen at the present day by the banks of the Exploits river, were the Red Indians, or Boeothics—a tribe long since extinct. The last of her race, a Red Indian woman, named Shanaandithith, called Mary March by her captors, who brought her in to St. John's, died there of consumption in 1829. As far as was known of them, this tribe lived entirely in the wilder portions of the interior, probably from distrust of the whites, who had ruthlessly attacked and slain them whenever met with, as also on account of the harassing invasions of the Micmacs, who frequently crossed from Acadia in fleets of canoes for that purpose. Smallpox has been assigned as the cause of their extinction, and it has been likewise supposed that the remnant of the tribe migrated into the interior of Labrador, where strange Indians are reported to have been seen from time to time, not agreeing in type with any of the known resident tribes.

The Boeothics have been described as a fine athletic race, and, until the latter obtained possession of firearms, superior in war to the Indians of the mainland. Their language was quite distinct from that of any of the surrounding tribes.

In a pamphlet published in London in 1622, by one Richard Whitburne, who had had much experience in the great bank fisheries, and was sent out to institute a commission to inquire into some abuses which were connected with the latter, are to be found some very interesting accounts of Newfoundland at that very early date of its history. Of the Red Indians, he says:—“It is well known that the natives of those parts have great stores of red ochre-wherewith they use to colour their bodies, bowes, arrows, and cannows in a painting manner, which cannows are their boats that they used to go to sea in, which are built in shape like the wherries on the River of Thames, with small timbers no thicker nor broader than hoopes, and instead of boards they use the barkes ofbirche trees, which they sew very artificially and close together, and then overlay the seams with turpentine, as pitch is used on the seames of ships and boats; and in like manner they use to sew the barkes of spruce and firre trees round and deep in proportion like a brasse kettle to boil their meet in, as it hath been well approved by divers men, but most especially to my certain knowledge by three mariners of a ship of Tapson, in the County of Devon, which ship riding there at anchor neere by me at the Harbor called Hearts Ease on the North side of Trinity Bay, and being robbed in the night by the savages of their apparell and divers other provisions did the next day seeke after them, and happened to come suddenly where they had set up three tents and were feasting, having three such cannows by them, and three pots made of such rinds of trees, standing each of them on three stones, boyling, with twelve fowles in each of them, every fowle as big as a widgeon and some so big as a ducke; they had also many such pots so served and fashioned, like leather buckets that are used for quenching of fire, and those were full of the yolks of eggs that they had taken and boyled hard and so dried small as it had been powder sugar, which the savages used in their broth as sugar is often used in some meates; they had great store of the skins of deere, beavers, beares, seals, otters and divers other fine skins which were excellent well dressed, as also great store of severall sorts of flesh dryed, and by shooting off a musket towards them they all ran away, naked, without any apparall but only some of them had their hats on their heads, which were made of seale skins, in fashion like our hats sewed handsomely with narrow bands about them set round with fine white shels. All their three cannows, their flesh, skins, yolks of eggs, targets, bows and arrows, and much fine okar, and divers others things they tooke and brought away and shared it among those that tooke it, and they brought to me the best cannow, bows, and arrows and divers of their skins and many other artificial things worth the noting which may seeme much to invite us to endeavour to finde out some other good trades with them.”

The zoology of Newfoundland is of a more Arctic type than that of the neighbouring Acadian Provinces, being characterised by the presence of the ptarmigan, and Arctic hare, and showing a remarkable falling off in the number of species of the continental fauna. Thus there is not a squirrel on the island, and neither porcupine, racoon, or mink. The presence of the wild cat is uncertain. Fewer species of the ordinary migratory birds, visitors of the Lower Provinces, are found here. At midsummer, in the neighbourhood of St. John's, I have noticed the absence of the night-hawk, so common a bird on the Continent. Neither were fire-flies, which were scintillating in myriads over the swamps in Nova Scotia at the time, to be seen. Many birds, however, passing over, or merely resting for a week or two on their way, on the eastern shores of Acadie, visit Newfoundland to breed, such as the Canada goose, fox-coloured sparrow (F. iliaca), snipe, and others, whilst migration of American species has a still further range to the north-east, and American birds form a large proportion of the avi-fauna of Greenland, according to Dr. Reinhardt. The woodcock is not indigenous to‘Newfoundland ; and, strange to say, the only specimen shot quite recently near St. John's was a European bird.

Considering the immense portion of this island which is claimed by water, bogs, and swamps, the well-ascertained absence of reptilia is singular. In the peninsula of Avalon I have plodded frequently along the edges of ponds and swamps, hoping to see some little croaker take a header from the bank, or in search of snakes by sunny woodland slopes—situations where they might be found at every few paces on the mainland—but all in vain. Indeed, more than once has the experiment been tried of turning out some of the large green-headed frogs (R. clamitans), to end in failure: in a few days they would all be found stiff on their backs. Cormack met with neither frog, snake, nor toad, on his journey across the main island, and observes that his Indians had never seen or heard of one.3 The island of Anticosti is said to be similarly deficient in representatives of this class. As has been written of Ireland in an ancient poem, composed by a St. Donatus, and dating as far back as the ninth century :—

“Nulla venena nocent, nec serpens serpit in herba, .
Nec conquesta canit garrula rana lacu.”

From foregoing remarks, it will be readily seen that the interior of Newfoundland is a vast field of discovery, especially interesting to the enterprising sportsman. In August and September, when the berries are ripe, animal life is wonderfully abundant (for America) on the open barrens. The deer begin their descent from the hills; willow grouse, now well grown, associate in large coveys; wild geese and curlew are found feeding on the upland barrens, and snipe are plentiful in the marshes. Bears are reported very numerous in the interior, where their well-beaten paths, traversed for ages, afford good walking to the traveller. When discovered at a distance, revelling amongst thickets of berry-bearing bushes, they may be easily approached under cover of ridges or rock boulders. Furs of many sorts would repay the trapper; foxes, marten, otter, beaver, or musk-rat. That of the Arctic hare (Lepus Arcticus) is a handsome, though not a very valuable skin ; the ears are tipped with black, the rest of its winter dress being pure white. This animal will attain a weight of fourteen pounds in Newfoundland : it appears to present no appreciable difference to L. variabilis of Europe. It is said that there are two species of ptarmigan on the island. If so, the other and less common description is probably the somewhat smaller and more slenderly-billed bird—Lagopus rupestris, or rock ptarmigan. In its summer plumage, the former species is one of the handsomest game birds the world can produce. At this season, the wings only are white, all the rest being a rich mottled chesnut; an arch of scarlet fringe over the eye. Grouse shooting (these birds are called grouse on the island, or sometimes by the fishermen and settlers—“ pattermegans”) begins in the neighbourhood of St. Johns, where they are protected, and the law receives the assistance of a game society, on the 25th August. The game laws are strictly observed in the vicinity of the capital; snipe are included in the Act.

Although the cariboo is generally dispersed through the interior, it will have been seen that the great bulk of these animals shift from the low-lying lake and savanna country to the hills, and vice versa, in the spring and fall. To reach the interior from their great stronghold in the high lands which form the extension of the island towards the Straits of Belle-Isle, they must cross the two chains of lakes and rivers which, overlapping each other near the centre of the island, discharge their waters respectively into the Bay of Islands and Notre Dame.

Into the latter great basin, and a little to the north of Exploits River, empties a stream called the Hall’s Bay River. It flows from a chain of small lakes running nearly east and west at the south-eastern termination of the mountain range before mentioned; and here the great body of the cariboo pass, commencing their southerly migration about the end of August. Hall’s Bay is to be reached only by sailing-vessel from St. John’s, but the hunting grounds may also be attained by ascending the magnificent river Humber from the Bay of Islands on the western side of the island—a course on which much grand scenery is to be viewed.

The north-eastern extremity of the Grand Pond, some fifty miles in length, with which it communicates, approaches the Hall’s Bay chain with easy access. Cariboo hunting may, however, be obtained by entering the interior from the heads of any of the great bays which so deeply indent the coast line of Newfoundland.

Although the Indian race, which once wholly subsisted on their flesh, is long since extinct, and there are but few resident Micmac hunters, the cariboo are much kept down by their bitter persecutors in every part of the globe where the reindeer is found—the wolves. “The Old Hunter/’ whose camp has been frequently pitched in the proximity of the famous deer passes just mentioned, tells me of the great destruction caused amongst the deer by this fleet and wily brute, which he has often seen and shot in the act of pursuit. The splendid head of a Newfoundland cariboo, figured No. 2 in the engraving of horns, was obtained from an animal shot at Deer Harbour, Trinity Bay, by Mr. F. N. Gisborne (who has kindly allowed me to copy it), when nearly run into by a wolf. It would appear singular that these magnificent Newfoundland bucks, which will attain the weight of five or even six hundred pounds, with ponderous antlers, should fly from the wolf, considering the tremendous power of a blow from their hoofs. The specimen last mentioned weighed 428 pounds after being cleaned.

With regard to the sport which may be expected by the angler on this island, it may be briefly stated that every lake abounds with the ordinary trout of Eastern America—S. fontinalis: sea-trout ascend all the rivers in July in astonishing abundance, taking anything in the shape of bait or fly readily and indiscriminately. Salmon fishing, however, appears to be uncertain; and a general belief obtains that, on the larger rivers of the north-east coast, they are shy of taking the fly. I am, however, informed by my friend Mr. Gisborne, to whom I am indebted for much information on the sports of Newfoundland, and who has hunted and explored the country in every direction, that Gander Bay River, an important stream affording excellent canoeing on its course to its large parent lake in the interior, and flowing into the southern end of Notre Dame Bay, is believed by him to be as fine a river for salmon-fishing as any in North America.