"I invite and announce the mountains which possess pure brightness, which have much brightness, created by Mazda, pure, lords of purity." So sang the Zarathustrian priest, chanting the Vispereds of the Avesta,--deep-hearted child of the world, himself now shining on the far-away horizon of human history. All the wildness and waste, all the sternest desolations of the whole earth, brought together to wed and enhance each other, and then relieved by splendor without equal, perhaps, in the world,--that is Labrador. I have dreamed that it was created on this wise. Ahriman, having long been defeated in his evil purposes by Ormuzd, fled away secretly to a distant part of the world, and there in silence made a land which should be utterly his own. He brought together every element of dread and terror,--barrenness, brokenness, dreariness, fearful cold, blinding fog, crushing ice, sudden savage change. And when it was completed, he rejoiced in his heart and said, "This is perfect in badness, it cannot be redeemed, it is wholly and forever mine, it is mine!" Then Ormuzd, lord of light, heard the voice of that accursed joy, and, looking, beheld the evil work. And he saw that it could not be redeemed, that it was fixed forever in its evil state. Then he came to it, and, seeking to change nothing, uplifted over it a token of immortal, unutterable beauty, that even this land might bear witness to his celestial sovereignty. But these waste lands have use as well as beauty. At Sleupe Harbor dwelt one Michael Cante, the patriarch of the neighborhood, if neighborhood it were to be called, where were only three houses within a space of as many miles. His years were now threescore and ten, but he was hale as a pine forest and sweet as maple sap. A French Canadian, he spoke English, not only like a native, but like a well-bred native,--was not ignorant of thoughts and books,--and altogether seemed a man superior to most in nature, intelligence, and manners. His birthplace was Quebec, and he had formerly possessed a very considerable fortune; but losing this through fraud, and finding himself deserted by "summer friends," he had conceived a disgust at polite society, and escaped to these solitudes. Here his wounds had healed, and his nature recovered its tone. His labors prospered; a healthy and handsome family grew up to enrich his household; and no regrets drew him back to the big world he had left behind. Nature preserves to herself the right of asylum, no matter how the Louis Napoleon of civilization may demand its surrender,--preserves a place of rest and refuge for the weary hearts which are self-sent into spiritual exile.