copper and coal deposits bid fair to rival the fisheries in value. One of the most extensive lumber districts centres about Red Indian Lake, south from Millertown Junction. This region was one of the last strongholds of the now extinct tribe of Beothics, the aborigines of Newfoundland.
The road climbs the higher levels of a spreading plateau. Here above the steppes that in spring and fall are frequented by migrating caribou, "the Topsails" spring upward with strange and telling effect. Snow often rests on these pyramidal buttes until the summer is well advanced. The rough-fashioned landscape has its own charm, but from the railway few mellow scenes appear until the Humber is approached. On the way is Grand Lake, the largest of the myriad fresh-water seas that strew the island. Near the railroad the plain is bereft of trees due to forest fires, which to a large extent have been ignited by sparks from passing engines. Settlers who live near the iron way complain that they must now take a day's journey to secure fire-wood, whereas all the heights hereabouts and still further east were formerly cloaked in green. Away from the railroad, abutting the long-drawn shores of the lake, are deep plushy growths of spruce, juniper, fir and pine which are the chosen haunts of sportsmen. In this district the Reid Syndicate have profitable coal-fields.
At the completion of the branch from a place
