MR CORMACK’S JOURNEY. 143

and often a precarious subsistence, having to depend altogether for food on their success in shooting wild animals, he reached St George’s Bay, on the west side of Newfoundland, in the month of November. Mr Cormack found the interior of the island much- more broken up with water than is generally known, lakes, rocks, marshes, and scrubby trees, forming its general character. In its geological aspect, granite prevailed everywhere ; and the exceptions that pre- sented themselves were, porphyry, quartz, gneis, sienite, basalts, 1nica~slate, clay-slate, and secondary sandstone. He met with many indications of iron, ‘2 and found coal; and Cl ossed several ridges of beautiful 2 M

serpentine, about the centre of the country, near the lake which he called J amesons Lake, and Jameson Mountains, and at Serpentine Lake. The eastern half of the interior is generally a low picturesque country, traversed by hills and lakes, and the whole diversified with trees of humble growth. The coun- try to the Westward he found rugged and moun- tainous, with little wood, until within a few miles of the western coast. The mountains are not generally in ridges, each seeming to have its own particular base.

Th ere are large tracts of peat marsh in the interior, which produce a strong wiry grass, and which ap- pear to have been once wooded, Mr Cormack having discovered trunks and roots of much largertrees under the surface than any now growing in Newfoundland. Spruce, birch, and larch, compose the woods. Pine

is seldom met with, and that generally of a small