Just as the prairies might have been called "Buffalo-land" thirty years ago, and the intervening enforested country may still be styled "Moose-land"—not that the moose is nearly so common in Saskatchewan and Athabaska as it was before the rebellion of 1885 opened up that country—so from the hunter's point of view "Caribou-land" would be an exceedingly apt name for the tundra of Greater Canada. Only the Indians and the Eskimos (the former living on the confines of the forests, and the latter along the far Arctic coasts) visit these territories, and but for the presence of the vast herds of caribou, it is pretty certain that such mosquito-haunted wastes would never be trodden by man. It is true that the musk-ox is an important inhabitant of the wastes, but the numbers of that strange beast, which seems to be half sheep, half ox, are not nearly so great, and there are reasons to believe that it is being slowly but surely driven from its ancient pastures by the caribou, just as, in so many parts of the world, the nations of the antelope have receded before the deer-tribes.
E. B. Osborn: "Greater Canada."
A SPRING MORNING
There was a roaring in the wind all night;
The rain came heavily and fell in floods:
But now the sun is rising calm and bright,
The birds are singing in the distant woods,
Over his own sweet voice the stock-dove broods,
The jay makes answer as the magpie chatters,
And all the air is filled with pleasant noise of waters.
All things that love the sun are out of doors,
The sky rejoices in the morning's birth,
The grass is bright with rain-drops;—on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth;
And with her feet, she from the plashy earth
Raises a mist, that, glittering in the sun,
Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.
Wordsworth
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.
Solomon's Song. II, 11, 12