Part 41 (2/2)

”What h the rocky glen?”

And angels, answering overhead, Sang, ”Peace on earth, good-will to hteen hundred years and more Since those sweet oracles were dumb; We wait for Him, like them of yore; Alas, He seeold No tiht be bold In perfect trust to come to Hiht like that the wisewills incline To that sweet Life which is the Law

So shall we learn to understand The si kindly, hand in hand, Sing, ”Peace on earth, good-will to , But keep at eve the faith of , ”To-day the Prince of Peace is born!”

LOWELL

THE BARREN LANDS

Long before the treeless wastes are reached, the forests cease to be forests except by courtesy The trees--black and white spruce, the Canadian larch, and the gray pine, , alder, etc--have an appearance of youth; so that the traveller would hardly suppose theht Really this juvenile appearance is a species of second childhood; for, on the shores of the Great Bear Lake, four centuries are necessary for the growth of a trunk not as thick as a man's wrist The further north the more lamentably decrepit becomes the appearance of these woodlands, until, presently, their sordidness is veiled by thick growths of gray lichens--the ”cariboudown frohs And still further north the trees becohted buds that have never been able to develop thees of arboreal growth take refuge under a thick carpet of lichens and etation of the Barren Grounds

Nothing ined The Northern forests are silent enough in winter time, but the silence of the Barren Grounds is far more profound Even in the depths of midwinter the North-Western bush has voices and is full of anireatest iinable nuisance to the trapper, whose baits they steal even before his back is turned) is still heard; the snow-birds and other sed creatures are never quiet between sunset and sunrise; the jack-rabbit, whose black bead-like eye betrays his presence a the snow-drifts in spite of his snohite fur, is co of the coyotes is heard every night But with the exception of the shriek of the snol or the yelping of a fox e seven or eight or nine months of winter on the Barren Grounds; unless the traveller is able to hear the rushi+ng sound--so Northern lights

In May, however, when the snows in to thaw, the Barren Grounds becoin with, the sky is literally darkened with enors from the southern reaches of the Mississippi and its tributaries to these sub-Arctic wildernesses, where they find an abundance of food, and at the sa in safety The snow-geese are the first to arrive; next coreat northern black-and-red-throated divers; and last of all the pin-tail and the long-tail ducks Soo no further than just beyond the outskirts of the forest region; others, flying further northward, lay their eggs in the open on the ratory hosts; troops of ptaro to no place where thethe stunted s on the shores of the lakes and sloughs; and in sunny weather the snow-bunting's song is heard

Soon after the arrival of the reen and gray The snohich never once thaws during the long winter, foretable life

As soon as the lengthening suetation co rate--a week's sunshi+ne on the wet soil co the aspect of the country It is then that the caribou leave their winter quarters in the forest region and journey to the Barren Grounds

Just as the prairies o, and the intervening enforested country may still be styled ”Moose-land”--not that the moose is nearly so common in Saskatchewan and Athabaska as it was before the rebellion of 1885 opened up that country--so from the hunter's point of view ”Caribou-land” would be an exceedingly apt name for the _tundra_ of Greater Canada Only the Indians and the Eski on the confines of the forests, and the latter along the far Arctic coasts) visit these territories, and but for the presence of the vast herds of caribou, it is pretty certain that such mosquito-haunted wastes would never be trodden by man It is true that the musk-ox is an important inhabitant of the wastes, but the nue beast, which seereat, and there are reasons to believe that it is being slowly but surely driven from its ancient pastures by the caribou, just as, in so many parts of the world, the nations of the antelope have receded before the deer-tribes

E B OSBORN: ”Greater Canada”

A SPRING MORNING

There was a roaring in the wind all night; The rain ca cal in the distant woods, Over his oeet voice the stock-dove broods, The jay pie chatters, And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters

All things that love the sun are out of doors, The sky rejoices in the ht with rain-drops;--on theraces in her mirth; And with her feet, she fro in the sun, Runs with her all the herever she doth run

WORDSWORTH

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the ti of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land

SOLOMON'S SONG II, 11, 12