When rich virgin soil is first farmed it yields a maximum harvest for
a minimum of human care. But presently it begins to fail, and will
fail altogether unless man returns to it in one form some of the
richness he expects to get from it in another. Now, exploited wild
life fails even faster under wasteful treatment; but, on the other
hand, with hardly any of the trouble required for continuous farming,
quickly recovers itself by being simply let alone. So when we consider
how easily it can be preserved in Labrador, and how beneficial its
preservation is to all concerned, we can understand how the wanton
destruction going on there is quite as idiotic as it is wrong.
Take "egging" as an example. The Indians, Eskimos and other beasts of
prey merely preserved the balance of nature by the toll they used to
take. No beast of prey, not even the white man, will destroy his own
stock supply of food. But with the nineteenth century came the
white-man market "eggers", systematically taking or destroying every
egg in every place they visited. Halifax, Quebec and other towns were
centres of the trade. The "eggers" increased in numbers and
thoroughness till the eggs decreased in the more accessible spots
below paying quantities. But other egging still goes on unchecked. The
game laws of the province of Quebec distinctly state: "It is forbidden
to take nests or eggs of wild birds at any time". But the swarms of
fishermen who come up the north shore of the St. Lawrence egg wherever
they go. If they are only to stay in the same spot for a day or two,
they gather all the eggs they can, put them into water, and throw away
every one that floats. Sometimes three, four, five or even ten times
as many are thrown away as are kept, and all those bird lives lost for
nothing. Worse still, if the men are going to stay long enough they
will often go round the nests and make sure of smashing every single
egg. Then they come back in a few days and gather every single egg,
because they know it has been laid in the mean time and must be
fresh. When we remember how many thousands of men visit the shore, and
that the resident population eggs on its own account, at least as high
up as the Pilgrims, only 100 miles from Quebec, we need not be
prophets to foresee the inevitable end of all bird life when subjected
to such a drain. And this is on the St. Lawrence, where there are laws
and wardens and fewer fishermen. What about the Atlantic Labrador,
where there are no laws, no wardens, many more fishermen, and ruthless
competitive egging between the residents and visitors? Of course,
where people must egg or starve there is nothing more to be said. But
this sort of egging is very limited, not enough to destroy the birds,
and the necessity for it will become less frequent as other sources of
supply become available. It is the utterly wanton destruction that is
the real trouble.
And it is just as bad with the birds as with the eggs. A schooner
captain says, "Now, boys, here's your butcher shop: help yourselves!"
and this, remember, is in the brooding season. Not long ago the men
from a vessel in Cross harbour landed on an islet full of eiders and
killed every single brooding mother. Such men have grown up to this,
and there is that amount of excuse for them. Besides, they ate the
birds, though they destroyed the broods. Yet, as they always say, "We
don't know no law here," it may be suspected that they do know there
really is one. These men do a partly excusable wrong. But what about
those who ought to know better? In the summer of 1907 an American
millionaire's yacht landed a party who shot as many brooding birds on
St. Mary island as they chose, and then left the bodies to rot and
the broods to perish. That was, presumably, for sport. For the same
kind of sport, motor boats cut circles round diving birds, drown them,
and let the bodies float away. The North Shore people have drowned
myriads of moulting scoters in August; but they use the meat. Bestial
forms of sport are many and vile. "C'est un plaisir superbe" was the
description given by some voyageurs on exploring work, who had spent
the afternoon chasing young birds about the rocks and stamping them to
death. Deer were literally hacked to pieces by construction gangs on
new lines last summer. Dynamiting a stream is quite a common trick
wherever it is safe to play it. Harbour seals are wantonly shot in
deep fresh water where they cannot be recovered, much as seagulls are
shot by blackguards from an ocean liner.
And the worst of it is that all this wanton destruction is not by any
means confined to the ignorant or those who have been brought up to
it. The men from the American yacht must have known better. So do
those educated men from our own cities, who shoot out of season down
the St. Lawrence and plead, quite falsely, that there is no game law
below the Brandy Pots. It is, of course, well understood that a man
can always shoot for necessary food. But this provision is shamelessly
misused. Last summer, when a great employer of labour down the Gulf
was telling where birds could be shot to the greatest advantage out of
season, and I was objecting that it was not clean sport, he said, "Oh,
but Indians can shoot for food at any time--_and we're all Indians
here!"_ And what are we to think of a rich man who used caribou simply
as targets for his new rifle, and a scientific man who killed 72 in
one morning, only to make a record? We need the true ideal of sport
and an altogether new ideal of conservation, and we need them very
badly and very soon.
We have had our warnings. The great auk and the Labrador duck have
both become utterly extinct within living memory. The Eskimo curlew is
decreasing to the danger point, and the Yellowlegs is following. The
lobster fishing is being wastefully conducted along the St. Lawrence;
so, indeed, are the other fisheries. Whales are diminishing: the Cape
Charles and Hawke Harbour establishments are running, but those at
L'Anse au Loup and Seven islands are not. The whole whaling industry
is disappearing all over the world before the uncontrolled persecution
of the new steam whalers. The walrus is exterminated everywhere in
Labrador except in the north. The seals are diminishing. Every year
the hunters are better supplied with better implements of butchery.
The catch is numbered by the hundreds of thousands, and this only for
one fleet in one place at one season, when the Newfoundlanders come up
the St. Lawrence at the end of the winter. The woodland caribou has
been killed off to such an extent as to cause both Indians and wolves
to die off with him. The barren-ground caribou is still plentiful,
though decreasing. The dying out of so many Indians before the time of
the Low and Eaton expedition of 1893-4 led to an increase of
fur-bearing animals. But renewed, improved, increased and uncontrolled
trapping has now reduced them below their former level. Hunting for
the market seems to be going round in a vicious circle, always
narrowing in on the quarry, which must ultimately be strangled to
death. The white man comes in with better equipment, more systematic
methods and often a "get-rich-and-get-out" idea that never entered a
native head. The Indian has to go further afield. The white follows.
Their prey shrinks back in diminishing numbers before them both.
Prices go up. The hunt becomes keener, the animals fewer and farther
off. Presently hunters and hunted will reach the far side of the
utmost limits. And then traded, traders and trade will all disappear
together. And it might so well be otherwise.
There is another point that should never be passed over. In these days
the public conscience is beginning to realize that the objection to
man's cruelty towards his other fellow-beings is something more than a
fad or a fancy. And wanton slaughter is very apt to be accompanied by
shameless cruelty. To kill off parents when the young are helpless....
But I have already given enough sickening details of this. The
treatment of the adults is almost worse in many typical cases. An
Indian will skin a hare alive and gloat over his quivering
death-agonies. The excuse is, "white man have fun, Indian have fun,
too." And it is a valid excuse, from one point of view. When "there's
nothing in caribou" except the value of the tongue, the tongue has
been cut out of the living deer, whose only other value is considered
to be the amusement afforded by his horrible fate. And, fiendish
cruelty like this is not confined to the outer wilds. When some
civilized English-speaking bird-catchers get a bird they do not want,
they will deliberately wrench its bill apart, so that it must die of
lingering starvation. Sometimes the cruelty is done to man himself.
Not so many years ago some whalers secured a lot of walrus hides and
tusks by having a whole herd of walrus wiped out, in spite of the fact
that these animals were, at that very time, known to be the only food
available for a neighbouring tribe of Eskimos. The Eskimos were
starved to death, every soul among them, as the Government explorers
found out. But Eskimos have no votes and never write to the papers;
while walrus hides were booming in the markets of civilization.
Things like these are not much spoken of. They very rarely appear in
print. And when they are mentioned at all it is generally with an
apology for introducing unpleasant details. But I am sure I need not
apologize to gentlemen who are anxious to know the full truth of this
great question, who cannot fail to see the connection between wanton
destruction and revolting cruelty, and who must be as ready to rouse
the moral conscience of our people against the cruelty as they are to
rouse its awakening sense of conservation against the destruction.