"Not with hatred's undertow
Doth the Love Eternal flow;
Every chain that spirits wear
Crumbles in the breath of prayer;
And the penitent's desire
Opens every gate of fire.

"Still Thy love, O Christ arisen,
Yearns to reach these souls in prison!
Through all depths of sin and loss
Drops the plummet of Thy cross!
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that cross could sound!"

Therefore well may Nature keep
Equal faith with all who sleep,
Set her watch of hills around
Christian grave and heathen mound,
And to cairn and kirkyard send
Summer's flowery dividend.

Keep, O pleasant Melvin stream,
Thy sweet laugh in shade and gleam!
On the Indian's grassy tomb
Swing, O flowers, your bells of bloom!
Deep below, as high above,
Sweeps the circle of God's love.

ICE AND ESQUIMAUX.

CHAPTER V.

TERRA INCOGNITA.

Labrador, geologists tell us, is the oldest portion of the American
Continent. It was also, and aside from the visits of the Scandinavians,
the first to be discovered by Europeans,--the Cabots having come to land
here more than a year before Columbus found the tropic mainland on his
third voyage. And to-day it is that part of the continent which has been
least explored. No one, to my knowledge, has ever crossed it: perhaps no
one could do so. I am not aware that any European has penetrated it
deeply. Hinds pushed up some hundred and fifty miles from the Gulf
coast, and thought this feat one which deserved two octavos of
commemoration. The coast, for some four hundred miles in extent, is
visited annually by hosts of fishermen; but twenty miles from tide-water
it is as little known to them as to the Bedouins.

We are now, however, able to affirm that the interior is all one immense
elevated plateau. Information which I obtained from an elderly
missionary at Hopedale, together with numerous indications that an
intelligent naturalist would know how to construe, enabled P---- to
determine this fact with confidence. It is a table-land "varying from
five to twenty-five hundred feet in height." Here not a tree grows, not
a blade of grass, only lichens and moss, What a vast and terrible waste
it must be! Where else upon the earth are all the elements of desolation
so combined? The missionary in question had penetrated to the borders of
this _cold_ desert and looked out over it. "No up _und_ down," he said.
"No dree.