9. Nearly all the mammals of the "fur countries "that is, the north-west regions of the Dominion—yield "peltries." Even the birds' skins find a market in Europe and civilised America. The swans, geese, and ducks are of many species, and are found in enormous abundance. In the winter they collect in millions at the mouths of the rivers, and wherever any open water is found. The air is alive with their cries, and at any alarm they arise in clouds from their swampy feeding grounds.

10. Chief among the fur animals are the sables or martens. There are several species of this animal in America, but the true Russian sable is wanting. Of the Hudson's Bay sable about 12,000 skins are bartered at the Company's posts every year. They are lighter in colour, and hence not so valuable as the skin of the Russian sable. The fur is in highest order—like that of most fur animals-in winter-time, when the lustre of the surface is great.

11. Foxes and squirrels are caught in immense numbers. There are at least five species of the former, and the black and silver-grey are highly prized for their furs, the skin often bringing from £10 to £50.

12. The wolverine or glutton, mink, Canadian otter, racoon, stoat or ermine, lynx, beaver, and various bears, are also captured for their furs. The robes of our judges are trimmed with the fur of the ermine. The black spots are supplied by the animals' black-tipped tails. The fur of the wolverine is of a dark nut-brown, and is chiefly used in Germany for trimming cloaks. The beaver was at one time the most important of all the fur animals, but owing to the discovery that silk answered well as a substitute for beaver in the napping of beaver hats, it has now become one of the least important.

13. The hunters or "trappers," as they are called, are generally Indians or half-breeds, although there are numerous instances of white men having become famous hunters.

LESSON LVÍ.

NEWFOUNDLAND.

It is an

1. Newfoundland, the oldest North American colony, has not yet joined the Dominion of Canada. island having an area of 40,200 square miles, or about two-thirds the size of England and Wales, with the small population of about 170,000.

2. The coast is deeply indented with bays and gulfs, which supply good harbours. The surface presents a barren and rugged appearance. It is covered with lakes or "ponds," as they are commonly called, swamps, bare mossy tracts, and rounded hills, with occasional forests of pine and birch. None of the rivers are navigable, there are no railways on the island, and roads are confined almost altogether to the southern sea-board.

3. The soil is too sterile to admit of cultivation, except in the few settled districts. The most fertile part is the valley of the Grand River. The interior is entirely uninhabited, even by the hardy Indians. The chief beasts of burden are the fine Newfoundland dogs, supposed to be natives of the island.

4. Though in the same latitude as the north of France, the climate is liable to great extremes. The cold is very severe along the north and east coasts, caused by the quantity of ice brought down by the cold currents from the Greenland seas. The country is also very liable to dense fogs, which often last for weeks. These are caused by the meeting of the waters of the cold polar current and the warm Gulf Stream. The quantity of icebergs and the fogs render navigation in the neighbourhood of the island both difficult and dangerous.

5. Stretching for some four or five hundred miles south and east of the island is a vast submarine bank, the seat of the great cod-fishery of the world. This fishery constitutes the chief occupation and the chief wealth of the greater part of the inhabitants, who live for the most part along the south-east coast. In the

L

winter months, from October to March, the cod is in best condition. In the spring months the seal fishery gives lucrative employment to large numbers of fishermen; whilst the copper, lead, and silver mines, which have begun to be worked, are destined to add to the riches of the colony.

6. Newfoundland formerly belonged to the French, but was ceded to England in 1713. Two small islands to the south are still owned by them, and the people take their share in the great fishery. The banks are also visited by fishing-boats from the United States.

7. St. John's, the capital, and the port and commercial town, has a population of about 23,000. It is situated on the south-eastern peninsula, which is partly cut off from the mainland by Trinity Bay, and is the most easterly town of America. The landing place of the Atlantic cable is at Heart's Content, on Trinity Bay.

8. Labrador, and the barren island of Anticosti in the estuary of the St. Lawrence, are dependencies of Newfoundland. Labrador is one of the coldest and most sterile regions on the face of the globe. It has good harbours and valuable seal, whale, and salmon fisheries. The inhabitants are Eskimo. They live chiefly on the flesh of the seal, and clothe themselves with its skin.

9. The principal exports from Newfoundland are cou-fish, cod and seal oils, seal-skins, and copper ore, amounting in value to a little over a million pounds, and of this about two-thirds is sent to England. The Government consists of two Houses of Parliament, and a Governor appointed by the British Crown.

THE WEST INDIES.—THE BAHAMAS-THE LESSER ANTILLES.

1. The "West Indies" include an immense number of islands and islets, which stretch in an irregular curve from the peninsula of Florida in North America to the

mouth of the Orinoco in South America. They cut off the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean. The islands were so-called from a belief of Columbus that he had hit upon portions of India when he first sighted them.

*

2. The West India Islands are usually grouped in three divisions—the Bahamas, on the north; the Lesser Antilles, to the south; and the Greater Antilles, lying east and west between the other groups. The Lesser Antilles are again divided into the Windward and Leeward Islands. The area of the whole is a little over 90,000 square miles-that is, about the size of Great Britain -and the population somewhat exceeds four millions.

3. One of the largest islands, Hayti, or St. Domingo, is independent, and divided into two republics; all the others are held by European nations-Great Britain, Spain, France, Denmark, and Holland. The British West India Islands measure nearly 12,000 square miles, and have a population of about one million.

4. The West Indies lie almost entirely within the tropics, but the temperature of the islands is much modified by their close proximity to the sea, by the elevation of many of them, and by the sea-breezes which blow over them. In Cuba ice forms occasionally in winter, but snow never falls. The highland regions in the interior are pleasant and healthy, but the coast districts are unhealthy, and yellow fever is epidemic. The rainy season lasts from May to November, and the dry season for the rest of the year.

5. The scourge of the West India Islands is the destructive hurricanes. These occur most frequently at the close of the summer, and the wind blows occasionally with such violence that the strongest trees are uprooted, and whole towns are destroyed in a few minutes.

6. The most important of the productions of these tropical islands belong to the vegetable kingdom. Here

* Long before the time of Columbus a land called Antilla was supposed to lie to the west of the Azores; and when Columbus returned to Spain it was affirmed that the land he had discovered must be the Antilla the world had so long dreamt of.

the sugar-cane and the coffee-tree flourish, the cocoa plant, the cotton-tree and tobacco. Here also are grown the fine tropical fruits--pine-apples, bananas, and oranges, besides yams and rice, spices and valuable dyes, and hard woods.

7. The inhabitants of the islands are Europeans, negroes imported from Africa, and mulattoes or people of mixed European and negro blood.

8. The Bahamas belong to Britain. They consist of hundreds of low islands, banks, and rocks, but only a few are inhabited. Bahama is the largest island, but Nassau, the capital, stands on New Providence Island. Watling's Island, or San Salvador, is interesting as being the first land in the New World discovered by Columbus. also the most fertile island of the group. The population of the whole is under 40,000. The chief products are dye-woods, salt, fruits, and turtles.

It is

9. Of the lesser Antilles the larger proportion are British. The most important of these British possessions are Barbadoes, Antigua, St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Grenada, Dominica, and St. Christopher in the Windward group, and Trinidad in the Leeward group. Those in the former group are about the size of the smallest English counties, whilst Trinidad is about equal in area to the county of Essex. The population of Barbadoes in 1871 was 162,000, of Trinidad, 109,000, whilst the populations of the other islands mentioned varied from 28,000 to 35,000. Most of the islands of the Windward group are of volcanic structure, but Antigua and Barbadoes are of coral formation. The chief productions and exports are sugar, rum, arrowroot, cocoa, coffee, cotton, and some timber.

10. The island of Trinidad is noted for one of the greatest natural curiosities in the world. This is the famous pitch or asphalt lake. "It is reached from the port of La Brea, which place is everywhere surrounded by pitch. The very ship anchors in pitch, you disembark on a pitch wharf, pitch lies heaped up in the harbour, in whatever way the eyes are turned they light on pitch, nothing but pitch."