The _flora_ of Saint-Pierre is the same as that of Lapland and Magellan's Straits. The number of plants diminishes as one proceeds towards the Pole; in Spitzbergen we find only forty species of phanerogamous plants. In changing their habitation, races of plants become extinct: some which dwell in the frozen steppes in the North become daughters of the mountain in the South; others which thrive in the peaceful atmosphere of the thickest forests decrease in strength and size until at last they expire on the stormy strands of the ocean. At Saint-Pierre, the marsh myrtle (_vaccinium fugilinosum_) is reduced to the condition of creeping grasses; it will soon be buried in the wadding and cushions of the mosses which serve as its soil. Myself a passenger plant, I have taken my precautions to disappear by the sea-shore, the site of my birth. The slope of the hillocks of Saint-Pierre is laid over with balsam-trees, medlars, dwarf palms, larches, black firs, the gems of which are used for brewing an antiscorbutic beer. These trees do not exceed a man's stature. The ocean wind pollards them, shakes them, bends them like so many ferns; then, gliding beneath these forests of shrubs, it raises them again; but it finds no trunks there, nor branches, nor arches, nor echoes to wail among, and it makes no more noise than on a heath. These rickety woods form a contrast with the great forests of Newfoundland, whose fir-trees bear a silver lichen (_alectoria trichodes_): the polar bears seem to have torn their fur against the branches of those trees, of which they are the strange creepers. The swamps of Jacques Cartier's[462] island contain roads beaten by these bears: it is as though one saw rustic footpaths in the neighbourhood of a sheep-fold. The whole night reechoes with the cries of these famished beasts; the traveller is comforted only by the no less mournful sound of the sea: those waves, so unsociable and so rude, become friends and companions. The northernmost point of Newfoundland touches the latitude of Cape Charles I. in Labrador; a few degrees higher, the polar landscape commences. If we are to believe the travellers, a charm lies upon those regions: in the evening the sun, touching the earth, seems to stay motionless, and subsequently reascends the sky instead of sinking beneath the horizon. The snow-clad mountains, the valleys carpeted with white moss upon which the reindeer browse, the seas covered with whales and strewn with ice-bergs, this whole scene glitters, lighted as it were at one time by the gleam of the setting sun and the light of dawn: one knows not whether he is assisting at the creation or the end of the world. A little bird, similar to that which sings in our woods at night, utters a plaintive warbling. Then love leads the Esquimaux to the icy rock where his mate awaits him: those human nuptials at the extreme boundaries of the earth lack neither dignity nor happiness. * [Sidenote: We leave Saint-Pierre.]