birds just hatched, and three eggs, which the young inside had just cracked. The parent birds were anxious about their newly born ones, and flew close to us. The little ones were pure white, soft and downy. We found also three young of the Charadrius semipalmatus,[1] and several old ones; these birds breed on the margin of a small lake among the low grasses. Traces have been seen of Hares or Rabbits, and one island is perforated throughout its shallow substratum of moss by a species of Rat, but in such burrows search for them is vain. The "Gulnare" came in this evening; our captain brought her in as pilot. We have had an almost complete eclipse of the moon this evening at half-past seven. The air very chilly.
July 2. A beautiful day for Labrador. Drew another M. arcticus. Went on shore, and was most pleased with what I saw. The country, so wild and grand, is of itself enough to interest any one in its wonderful dreariness. Its mossy, gray-clothed rocks, heaped and thrown together as if by chance, in the most fantastical groups imaginable, huge masses hanging on minor ones as if about to roll themselves down from their doubtful-looking situations, into the depths of the sea beneath. Bays without end, sprinkled with rocky islands of all shapes and sizes, where in every fissure a Guillemot, a Cormorant, or some other wild bird retreats to secure its egg, and raise its young, or save itself from the hunter's pursuit. The peculiar cast of the sky, which never seems to be certain, butterflies flitting over snow-banks, probing beautiful dwarf flowerets of many hues pushing their tender stems from the thick bed of moss which everywhere covers the granite rocks. Then the morasses, wherein you plunge up to your knees, or the walking over the stubborn, dwarfish shrubbery, making one think that as he goes he treads down the forests of Labrador. The unex-
- ↑ American Ring Plover, now known as Ægialitis semipalmata.—E. C.
