ems which, under the magic touch of
sunset light, had the evening before appeared like vast rubies, blazing
amidst the rose which surrounded them.

And this evening the spectacle of the preceding one was repeated, though
more distantly and on a larger scale. Ph---- thought it the finer of the
two. Far away the mountain height towered, a marvel of aerial blue,
while broad spurs reaching out on either side were clothed, the one in
shiny rose-red, the other in ethereal roseate tints super-imposed upon
azure; and farther away, to the southeast, a mountain range lay all in
solid carmine along the horizon, as if the earth blushed at the touch of
heaven.

"I invite and announce the mountains which possess pure brightness,
which have much brightness, created by Mazda, pure, lords of purity." So
sang the Zarathustrian priest, chanting the Vispereds of the
Avesta,--deep-hearted child of the world, himself now shining on the
far-away horizon of human history.

All the wildness and waste, all the sternest desolations of the whole
earth, brought together to wed and enhance each other, and then relieved
by splendor without equal, perhaps, in the world,--that is Labrador.

I have dreamed that it was created on this wise. Ahriman, having long
been defeated in his evil purposes by Ormuzd, fled away secretly to a
distant part of the world, and there in silence made a land which should
be utterly his own. He brought together every element of dread and
terror,--barrenness, brokenness, dreariness, fearful cold, blinding fog,
crushing ice, sudden savage change. And when it was completed, he
rejoiced in his heart and said, "This is perfect in badness, it cannot
be redeemed, it is wholly and forever mine, it is mine!" Then Ormuzd,
lord of light, heard the voice of that accursed joy, and, looking,
beheld the evil work. And he saw that it could not be redeemed, that it
was fixed forever in its evil state. Then he came to it, and, seeking to
change nothing, uplifted over it a token of immortal, unutterable
beauty, that even this land might bear witness to his celestial
sovereignty.

But these waste lands have use as well as beauty. At Sleupe Harbor dwelt
one Michael Cante, the patriarch of the neighborhood, if neighborhood it
were to be called, where were only three houses within a space of as
many miles. His years were now threescore and ten, but he was hale as a
pine forest and sweet as maple sap. A French Canadian, he spoke English,
not