Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Along the northern Labrador coast, steep-sided mountains are punctuated with glacier-carved, U-shaped val-
leys and fiords extending far inland. By contrast, southern Labrador is gently rolling peatland interrupted by
eskers (ridges of sand and gravel that were once the beds of glacial streams), shallow rivers, and string bogs.
Stunted stands of black spruce and tamarack are climax species here. White spruce predominates along the
coast, but coastal heath covers headlands and cliff summits. The region hosts one of the world's largest herds
of ungulates, the George River caribou herd, which crosses the Labrador-Ungava Peninsula between the Lab-
rador Sea and Hudson Bay. This largely unpopulated hinterland is also an important breeding habitat for the
endangered eastern harlequin duck, which nests along the fast-flowing rivers, and the peregrine falcon, whose
aeries are found in the Torngat Mountains that tower out of the Labrador Sea.
Waves of Culture
The fecundity of the North Atlantic was a revelation for the first wave of explorers to reach this continent's
shores. A millennium ago, the writers of The Vinland Sagas spoke of the “wonder beaches of white sand” and
offshore islands of “so many birds . . . that they could hardly walk without stepping on eggs.” Five hundred
years later, in 1497, the Italian explorer John Cabot spoke of a “sea full of fish which are taken not only with
net but also with a basket in which a stone is put so that the basket may plunge into water.”
John Smith's exploratory voyages in Chesapeake Bay, from 1607 to 1609, reveal a similar superabundance
of fish in the shallow, brackish waters of the Patuxent River estuary, where it meets the bay. Smith's account
refers to the “infinite schools of diverse kinds of fish,” which included striped bass and bluefish voraciously
preying on acres of menhaden, as well as baitfish such as Atlantic silverside, bay anchovy, and mummichog.
In addition, spot, croaker, and white perch haunted the tributary creeks, and cownose rays foraged on bottom-
dwelling clams and worms.
The earliest natural history of the Atlantic coast was penned by fur trader and fish merchant Nicolas Denys
in his 1671 Description and Natural History of the Coasts of North America. Geographically, this curious work
covers the area then known as Acadia, consisting of the Maritime Provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
and Prince Edward Island, though his survey begins with Maine's Penobscot Bay. He gives an especially de-
tailed description of the Gulf of St. Lawrence coast—and the mammals, fishes, birds, and trees found
there—from Cape Breton Island to the Gaspé, including Prince Edward Island. It sketches a picture of such a
wealth of wildlife that today it is difficult to credit. He named one of his anchorages Cocagne, a place name
that persists to this day along the Acadian Shore of New Brunswick. It means “a land of the greatest abund-
ance,” which Denys was at pains to describe in his account: “. . . I found there so much with which to make
good cheer during the eight days which bad weather obliged me to remain there. All of my people were so sur-
feited with game and fish that they wished no more, whether Wild Geese, Ducks, Teal, Plover, Snipe large and
small, Pigeons, Hares, Partridges, young Partridges, Salmon, Trout, Mackerel, Smelt, Oysters and other kinds
of good fish. All that I can tell of it is this, that our dogs lay beside the meat and fish, so much were they sati-
ated with it.”
A century later, an Englishman gave this wonderstruck account of his arrival on the Grand Banks, after a
twenty-seven-day crossing of the Atlantic:
The 12th of April . . . we came on soundings and knew it to be the Bank of Newfoundland. We would
have understood this well enough from other indications for it seemed as if all the Fowles of the Air were
gathered thereunto. They so bemused the eye with their perpetual comings and goings that their numbers
quite defied description. There can be few places on Earth where is to be seen such a manifestation of the
fecundity of his Creation.
Farley Mowat recounts this rapturous testament to the Atlantic's natural bounty in Sea of Slaughter, his
damning indictment of its squandering in the last three centuries. This destruction of the Atlantic coast's natur-
