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It rained all day on September 2, 1612, and the explorers were forced to "staie under a tree all this day and night" but by the next morning the worst of the rain was over and they continued on their way passing through "much open ground with a fresh watter lake in it". As we proceeded northwest beyond the berry barrens around Shearstown Road on November 3, 1997, we climbed up the side of a steep, heavily forested hill and at the top came out onto a barren with a lake in the middle. This lake is known locally as Frainey's Pond and may well be the "fresh watter lake" mentioned by Crout. Unlike some areas that are now barren but may once have been wooded, the high ground around Frainey's Pond has probably been barren for thousands of years. In early November the barrens stretching away from the pond were so covered in caribou moss that it looked like it must have snowed. When Crout passed through in early September the same barrens must have been blanketed in blueberries. It is here too, at the height of land between the two bays, that the waters begin to flow west towards Trinity Bay.
Beyond the barrens Crout tells us, they passed "a wood and thickett [and] came again to open ground wher was a very faire river...". From Frainey's Pond we set our course once more to the northwest and, after passing over about a mile of moss covered and boulder strewn barrens, came to the eastern edge of the valley that slopes down towards the Grassy Gullies. The side of this valley is heavily wooded but before you reach the river the land levels out and you pass through an alder thicket. The Grassy Gullies is not so much a river as a series of small ponds linked by steams that flow to the southwest towards the bottom of Trinity Bay but from the crest of the hill above it has the appearance of a river and is more like a river than any of the streams we had passed since we started out. It was here that Crout reported seeing "a pathe which [showed that] much deer had passed that way".
Images (from left to right, top to bottom) 1. Our first view of Frainey's Pond. 2. Approaching the Grassy Gullies. 3. Moving across the barrens west of Frainey's Pond. 4. Looking southwest across the Grassy Gullies. Crout records seeing a caribou trail here.
 
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