Eastern Labrador is a region in which explorers have frequently perished from cold and starvation.

Although in the lofty parts of the Yukon country (three hundred and fifty miles north of treeless Labrador) the winter is intensely cold, and the ground is frozen for a considerable depth downwards, all the year round, there are still great forests; and a white and Amerindian population find it possible to live there all the year round, while animal life is extremely abundant.

On the other hand, a good deal of the territory between Mackenzie River and Hudson's Bay is almost uninhabitable, except during the summertime, owing to the depth of the snow and the bare rocky nature of the ground.
The treeless area north of Lake Athabaska (the "barren lands" of the Canadian Dominion) seems to consist of nothing but slabs of rock and loose stones.

Yet this region is far from being without vegetation.
The rock is often covered with a thin or thick sod of lichen ("reindeer moss", in some districts three feet deep) intermixed with the roots of the wishakapakka herb (_Ledum palustre_, from which Labrador tea is made), of cranberries, gooseberries, heather (with white bell flowers), and a dwarf birch.

This last, in sheltered places where a little vegetable soil has been formed, grows into a low scrubby bush.