There were also lynxes and foxes, besides polar bears, martens,
squirrels, &c. The human inhabitants of Newfoundland, whom I shall
describe in the next chapter, were known subsequently by the name of
Beothuk, or Beothik, a nickname of no particular meaning. They had
evidently been separated for many centuries from contact with the
Amerindians of the mainland, though they may have been visited
occasionally on the north by the Eskimo. They had in fact been so long
separated from the other Amerindians of North America that they were
strikingly different from them in their habits, customs, and language.
[Footnote 1: The first Frenchmen visiting North America, and seeing
the caribou without their horns, thought they were a kind of wild ass.
The reindeer of Newfoundland is a sub-species peculiar to this
island.]
The climate of Newfoundland is not nearly so cold as that of the
mainland, nor so hot in summer, but it is spoilt at times by fogs and
sea mists which conceal the landscape for days together. In the
wintertime, and quite late in the spring, quantities of ice hang about
the shores of the islands, and when the warm weather comes, these
accumulations of ice slip away into the Atlantic in the form of
icebergs and are most dangerous to shipping.
To the south-east of Newfoundland the sea is very shallow for hundreds
of miles, the remains no doubt of a great extension of North America
in the direction of Europe which had sunk below the surface ages ago.
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