The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Up in the bays, however, trees were found, and, curiously enough, they
were larger and more plentiful in high latitudes than farther south.
This puzzled me much at first. Evidently, however, it was due in part to
the nature of the rock. At Sleupe Harbor, latitude 51 deg., this was
granite;[C] farther on it was sienite; then the sienite showed a strong
predominance of feldspar; then it became an impure Labradorite; then
passed into gneiss; the gneiss became soft, stratified, and frequently
intersected by trap;--and with every softer quality of rock there was an
improvement in vegetation. This was particularly observable at L'Anse du
Loup, where there is a red sandstone formation extending some miles
along the sea and a mile or two inland. Here we seemed suddenly
transported to a Southern climate, so soft was the scenery, so green the
surface. The effect was enhanced by the aspect of the sandstone cliff,
which, in alternating horizontal shades of red, fronts the sea, with a
vertical height of three hundred feet for the whole extent of this
formation,--so ruddy and glowing under the sunshine, as we sailed past,
that one felt warmed by the sight, But a little farther back rose the
same old hard-hearted hills, cold, broken, and bare as ever.
But the difference in soil does not wholly explain the difference in
vegetation. In the mission-garden at Caribou Island next to nothing will
grow; in the garden at Hopedale, four degrees farther north, though the
rock here is very hard, I found half an acre of potatoes in blossom, the
tops about six inches high, together with beets, carrots, cabbages,
onions, nice currant-bushes, and rhubarb growing luxuriantly. These are
all started under cover, and are not set out in the garden until toward
the end of June, and a great deal of Esquimaux labor must go to their
production; yet it is doubtful whether the same pains would bring about
the same result at the Caribou station.
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