Dr. Grant began to
whistle their soft triple note and the wisp of birds circled in the air,
coming nearer and nearer until, becoming suspicious, they winged their
journey away. And then we were invaded by a troop of grosbeaks who
gathered in the neighboring bushes, their queer, tiny voices, seeming
quite out of place, coming out of such stocky, strong little bodies. In
the meanwhile a woodpecker was tap-tapping on a dead juniper. It was all
so very different from the cruel, ragged coast with its unceasing turmoil
of hungry waves breaking upon the cliffs. Here there reigned such a
wonderful peace, interrupted only by the song of birds. There were soft
outlines in the distance, and everywhere the scent of balsams. Of course
it was all very desolate; a vast swamp dominated by sterile ridges of
boulder-strewn hills; an immense land of peat-bogs and mosses, grey and
green and purplish, upon which only the caribou and the birds appeared
able to live. Yet it was no longer a place where the fury of the elements
was ever ready to unchain itself against poor people clinging to their
bare rocks. The breath of one's nostrils went ever so deep in one's
lungs, and one's muscles seemed to gather energy and respond ever so much
more efficiently than they ever did in big towns.
"I don't think I ever before realized the beauty of great waste places,"
I said. "It looks like a world infinite and wonderful, over which we
might be traveling in quest of some Holy Grail that should be hidden away
beyond those pink and mauve mountains.
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