THE PEOPLE OF LABRADOR
Since the publication of the book "Labrador, the Country and the
People," the means of transportation to the coast have been so
improved that each year brings us an increasing number of visitors to
enjoy the attractions of this sub-arctic land. So many misconceptions
have arisen, however, as to the country and its inhabitants, and one
is so often misrepresented as distorting conditions, that it seems
wise at this point to try and answer a few questions which are so
familiar to us who live on the coast as to appear almost negligible.
The east coast of Labrador belongs to Newfoundland, and is not part of
the territory of Canada, although the ill-defined boundary between the
two possessions has given rise to many misunderstandings. Newfoundland
is an autonomous government, having its own Governor sent out from
England, Prime Minister, and Houses of Parliament in the city of St.
John's. Instead of being a province of Canada, as is often supposed,
and an arrangement which some of us firmly believe would result in the
ultimate good of the Newfoundlanders, it stands in the same
relationship to England as does the great Dominion herself. Labrador
is owned by Newfoundland, so that legally the Labradormen are
Newfoundlanders, though they have no representation in the
Newfoundland Government. At Blanc Sablon, on the north coast in the
Straits of Belle Isle, the Canadian Labrador begins, so far as the
coast-line is concerned. The hinterland of the Province of Ungava is
also a Canadian possession.
The original natives of the Labrador were Eskimos and bands of roving
Indians. The ethnologist would find fruitful opportunities in the
country. The Eskimos, one of the most interesting of primitive races,
have still a firm foothold in the North--chiefly around the five
stations of the Moravian Brethren, upon whose heroic work I need not
now dilate. The Montagnais Indians roam the interior. They are a
branch of the ancient Algonquin race who held North America as far
west as the Rockies. They are the hereditary foes of the Eskimos,
whole settlements of whom they have more than once exterminated.
Gradually, with the influx of white settlers from Devon and Dorset,
from Scotland and France, the "Innuits" were driven farther and
farther north, until there are only some fifteen hundred of them
remaining to-day. Among them the Moravians have been working for the
past hundred and thirty-five years. A few bands of Indians still
continue to rove the interior, occasionally coming out to the coast to
dispose of their furs, and obtain such meagre supplies as their mode
of life requires. The balance of the inhabitants of the country are
white men of our own blood and religion--men of the sea and dear to
the Anglo-Saxon heart.
During the past years it has been the experience of many of my
colleagues, as well as myself, that as soon as one mentions the fact
that part of our work is done on the north shore of Newfoundland,
one's audience loses interest, and there arises the question: "But
Newfoundland is a prosperous island. Why is it necessary to carry on a
charitable enterprise there?"
There is a sharp demarcation between main or southern Newfoundland and
the long finger of land jutting northward, which at Cape Bauld splits
the polar current, so that the shores of the narrow peninsula are
continuously bathed in icy waters. The country is swept by biting
winds, and often for weeks enveloped in a chilly and dripping blanket
of fog. The climate at the north end of the northward-pointing finger
is more severe than on the Labrador side of the Straits. Indeed, my
friend, Mr. George Ford, for twenty-seven years factor of the Hudson
Bay Company at Nakvak, told me that even in the extreme north of
Labrador he never really knew what cold was until he underwent the
penetrating experience of a winter at St. Anthony. The Lapp reindeer
herders whom we brought over from Lapland, a country lying well north
of the Arctic Circle, after spending a winter near St. Anthony, told
me that they had never felt anything like that kind of cold, and that
they really could not put up with it! The climate of the actual
Labrador is clear, cold, and still, with a greater proportion of
sunshine than the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. As a matter of
fact, our station at St. Anthony is farther north and farther east
than two of our hospitals on the Labrador side of the Straits of Belle
Isle. Along that north side the gardens of the people are so good that
their produce affords a valuable addition to the diet--but not so
here.
[Illustration: BATTLE HARBOUR]
The dominant industry of the whole Colony is its fisheries--the
ever-recurrent pursuit of the luckless cod, salmon, herring, halibut,
and lobster in summer, and the seal fishery in the month of March. It
is increasingly difficult to overestimate the importance, not merely
to the British Empire, but to the entire world, of the invaluable
food-supply procured by the hardy fishermen of these northern waters.
Only the other day the captain of a patrol boat told me that he had
just come over from service on the North Sea, and in his opinion it
would be years before those waters could again be fished, owing to the
immense numbers of still active mines which would render such an
attempt disproportionately hazardous. From this point of view, if
from no other more disinterested angle, we owe a great and continuous
debt to the splendid people of Britain's oldest colony. It was among
these white fishermen that I came out to work primarily, the floating
population which every summer, some twenty thousand strong, visits the
coasts of Labrador; and later including the white resident settlers of
the Labrador and North Newfoundland coasts as well.
The conditions prevailing among some of the people at the north end of
Newfoundland and of Labrador itself should not be confused with those
of their neighbours to the southward. Chronic poverty is, however,
very far from being universally prevalent in the northern district.
Some of the fishermen lead a comfortable, happy, and prosperous life;
but my old diaries, as well as my present observations, furnish all
too many instances in which families exist well within the danger-line
of poverty, ignorance, and starvation.
The privations which the inhabitants of the French or Treaty shore and
of Labrador have had to undergo, and their isolation from so many of
the benefits of civilization, have had varying effects on the
residents of the coast to-day. While a resourceful and kindly, hardy
and hospitable people have been developed, yet one sometimes wonders
exactly into what era an inhabitant of say the planet Mars would place
our section of the North Country if he were to alight here some crisp
morning in one of his unearthly machines. For we are a reactionary
people in matters of religion and education; and our very "speech
betrays us," belonging as so many of its expressions do to the days
when the Pilgrims went up to Canterbury, or a certain Tinker wrote of
another and more distant pilgrimage to the City of Zion.
The people are, naturally, Christians of a devout and simple faith.
The superstitions still found among them are attributable to the
remoteness of the country from the current of the world's thought, the
natural tendency of all seafaring people, and the fact that the days
when the forbears of these fishermen left "Merrie England" to seek a
living by the harvest of the sea, and finally settled on these rocky
shores, were those when witches and hobgoblins and charms and amulets
were accepted beliefs.
Nevertheless, to-day as a medical man one is startled to see a fox's
or wolf's head suspended by a cord from the centre, and to learn that
it will always twist the way from which the wind is going to blow. One
man had a barometer of this kind hanging from his roof, and explained
that the peculiar fact was due to the nature of the animals, which in
life always went to windward of others; but if you had a seal's head
similarly suspended, it would turn from the wind, owing to the timid
character of that creature. Moreover, it surprises one to be assured,
on the irrefutable and quite unquestioned authority of "old Aunt Anne
Sweetapple," that aged cats always become playful before a gale of
wind comes on.
"I never gets sea boils," one old chap told me the other day.
"How is that?" I asked.
"Oh! I always cuts my nails on a Monday, so I never has any."
There is a great belief in fairies on the coast. A man came to me once
to cure what he was determined to believe was a balsam on his baby's
nose. The birthmark to him resembled that tree. More than one had
given currency if not credence to the belief that the reason why the
bull's-eye was so hard to hit in one of our running deer rifle matches
was that we had previously charmed it. If a woman sees a hare without
cutting out and keeping a portion of the dress she is then wearing,
her child will be born with a hare-lip.
When stripping a patient for examination, I noticed that he removed
from his neck what appeared to be a very large scapular. I asked him
what it could be. It was a haddock's fin-bone--a charm against
rheumatism. The peculiarity of the fin consists in the fact that the
fish must be taken from the water and the fin cut out before the
animal touches anything whatever, especially the boat. Any one who has
seen a trawl hauled knows how difficult a task this would be, with the
jumping, squirming fish to cope with.
Protestant and Catholic alike often sew up bits of paper, with prayers
written on them, in little sacks that are worn around the neck as an
amulet; and green worsted tied around the wrist is reported to be a
never-failing cure for hemorrhage.
Every summer some twenty thousand fishermen travel "down North" in
schooners, as soon as ever the ice breaks sufficiently to allow them
to get along. They are the "Labrador fishermen," and they come from
South Newfoundland, from Nova Scotia, from Gloucester, and even
Boston. Some Newfoundlanders take their families down and leave them
in summer tilts on the land near the fishing grounds during the
season. When fall comes they pick them up again and start for their
winter homes "in the South," leaving only a few hundreds of scattered
"Liveyeres" in possession of the Labrador.
We were much surprised one day to notice a family moving their house
in the middle of the fishing season, especially when we learned that
the reason was that a spirit had appropriated their dwelling.
Stephen Leacock would have obtained much valuable data for his essay
on "How to Become a Doctor" if he had ever chanced to sail along "the
lonely Labrador." In a certain village one is confidently told of a
cure for asthma, as simple as it is infallible. It consists merely of
taking the tips of all one's finger-nails, carefully allowed to grow
long, and cutting them off with sharp scissors. In another section a
powder known as "Dragon's Blood" is very generally used as a plaster.
It appears quite inert and harmless. A little farther south along the
coast is a baby suffering from ophthalmia. The doctor has only been
called in because blowing sugar in its eyes has failed to cure it.
A colleague of mine was visiting on his winter rounds in a delightful
village some forty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital. The "swiles"
(seals) had struck in, and all hands were out on the ice, eager to
capture their share of these valuable animals. But snow-blindness had
incontinently attacked the men, and had rendered them utterly unable
to profit by their good fortune. The doctor's clinic was long and busy
that night. The following morning he was, however, amazed to see many
of his erstwhile patients wending their way seawards, each with one
eye treated on his prescription, but the other (for safety's sake)
doctored after the long-accepted methods of the talent of the
village--tansy poultices and sugar being the acknowledged favourites.
The consensus of opinion obviously was that the stakes were too high
for a man to offer up both eyes on the altar of modern medicine.
In the course of many years' practice the methods for the treatment
and extraction of offending molars which have come to my attention are
numerous, but none can claim a more prompt result than the following:
First you attach a stout, fine fish-line firmly to the tooth. Next
you lash the other end to the latch of the door--we do not use knobs
in this country. You then make the patient stand back till there is a
nice tension on the line, when suddenly you make a feint as if to
strike him in the eye. Forgetful of the line, he leaps back to avoid
the blow. Result, painless extraction of the tooth, which should be
found hanging to the latch.
Although there have been clergyman of the Church of England and
Methodist denominations on the coast for many years past--devoted and
self-sacrificing men who have done most unselfish work--still, their
visits must be infrequent. One of them told me in North Newfoundland
that once, when he happened to pass through a little village with his
dog team on his way South, the man of one house ran out and asked him
to come in. "Sorry I have no time," he replied. "Well, just come in at
the front door and out at the back, so we can say that a minister has
been in the house," the fisherman answered.
Even to-day, to the least fastidious, the conditions of travel leave
much to be desired. The coastal steamers are packed far beyond their
sleeping or sitting capacity. On the upper deck of the best of these
boats I recall that there are two benches, each to accommodate four
people. The steamer often carries three hundred in the crowded season
of the fall of the year. One retires at night under the
misapprehension that the following morning will find these seats still
available. On ascending the companionway, however, one's gaze is met
by a heterogeneous collection of impedimenta. The benches are buried
as irretrievably as if they "had been carried into the midst of the
sea." Almost anything may have been piled on them, from bales of
hay--among which my wife once sat for two days--to the nucleus of a
chicken farm, destined, let us say, for the Rogues' Roost Bight.
As the sturdy little steamer noses her way into some picturesque
harbour and blows a lusty warning of her approach, small boats are
seen putting off from the shore and rowing or sculling toward her with
almost indecorous rapidity. Lean over the rail for a minute with me,
and watch the freight being unloaded into one of these bobbing little
craft. The hatch of the steamer is opened, a most unmusical winch
commences operations--and a sewing machine emerges _de profundis_.
This is swung giddily out over the sea by the crane and dropped on the
thwarts of the waiting punt. One shudders to think of the probably
fatal shock received by the vertebrae of that machine. One's
sympathies, however, are almost immediately enlisted in the interest
and fortunes of a young and voiceful pig, which, poised in the blue,
unwillingly experiences for the moment the fate of the coffin of the
Prophet. Great shouting ensues as a baby is carried down the ship's
ladder and deposited in the rocking boat. A bag of beans, of the
variety known as "haricot," is the next candidate. A small hole has
been torn in a corner of the burlap sack, out of which trickles a
white and ominous stream. The last article to join the galaxy is a tub
of butter. By a slight mischance the tub has "burst abroad," and the
butter, a golden and gleaming mass,--with unexpected consideration
having escaped the ministrations of the winch,--is passed from one
pair of fishy hands to another, till it finds a resting-place by the
side of the now quiescent pig.
We pass out into the open again, bound for the next port of call. If
the weather chances to be "dirty," the sufferers from _mal-de-mer_ lie
about on every available spot, be it floor or bench, and over these
prostrate forms must one jump as one descends to the dining-saloon for
lunch. It may be merely due to the special keenness of my
professional sense, but the apparent proportion of the halt, lame, and
blind who frequent these steamers appears out of all relation to the
total population of the coast. Across the table is a man with an
enormous white rag swathing his thumb. The woman next him looks out on
a blue and altered world from behind a bandaged eye. Beside one sits a
young fisherman, tenderly nursing his left lower jaw, his enjoyment of
the fact that his appetite is unimpaired by the vagaries of the North
Atlantic tempered by an unremitting toothache.
But the cheerful kindliness and capability of the captain, the crew,
and the passengers, on whatever boat you may chance to travel,
pervades the whole ship like an atmosphere, and makes one forget any
slight discomfort in a justifiable pride that as an Anglo-Saxon one
can claim kinship to these "Vikings of to-day."
Life is hard in White Bay. An outsider visiting there in the spring of
the year would come to the conclusion that if nothing further can be
done for these people to make a more generous living, they should be
encouraged to go elsewhere. The number of cases of tubercle, anaemia,
and dyspepsia, of beri-beri and scurvy, all largely attributable to
poverty of diet, is very great; and the relative poverty, even
compared with that of the countries which I have been privileged to
visit, is piteous. The solution of such a problem does not, however,
lie in removing a people from their environment, but in trying to make
the environment more fit for human habitation.
The hospitality of the people is unstinted and beautiful. They will
turn out of their beds at any time to make a stranger comfortable, and
offer him their last crust into the bargain, without ever expecting or
asking a penny of recompense. But here, as all the world over, the
sublime and the ridiculous go hand in hand. On one of my dog trips
the first winter which I spent at St. Anthony, the bench on which I
slept was the top of the box used for hens. This would have made
little difference to me, but unfortunately it contained a youthful and
vigorous rooster, which, mistaking the arrival of so many visitors for
some strange herald of morning, proceeded every half-hour to salute it
with premature and misdirected zeal, utterly incompatible with
unbroken repose just above his head. It was possible, without moving
one's limbs much, to reach through the bars and suggest better things
to him; but owing to the inequality which exists in most things, one
invariably captured a drowsy hen, while the more active offender
eluded one with ease. Lighting matches to differentiate species under
such exceptional circumstances in the pursuit of knowledge was quite
out of the question.
A visit to one house on the French shore I shall not easily forget.
The poor lad of sixteen years had hip disease, and lay dying. The
indescribable dirt I cannot here picture. The bed, the house, and
everything in it were full of vermin, and the poor boy had not been
washed since he took to bed three or four months before. With the help
of a clergyman who was travelling with me at the time, the lad was
chloroformed and washed. We then ordered the bedding to be burned,
provided him with fresh garments, and put him into a clean bed. The
people's explanation was that he was in too much pain to be touched,
and so they could do nothing. We cleansed and drained his wounds and
left what we could for him. Had he not been so far gone, we should
have taken him to the hospital, but I feared that he would not survive
the journey.
Although at the time it often seemed an unnecessary expenditure of
effort in an already overcrowded day, one now values the records of
the early days of one's life on the coast. In my notebook for 1895 I
find the following: "The desolation of Labrador at this time is easy
to understand. No Newfoundlanders were left north of us; not a vessel
in sight anywhere. The ground was all under snow, and everything
caught over with ice except the sea. I think that I must describe one
house, for it seems a marvel that any man could live in it all winter,
much less women and children. It was ten feet by twenty, one storey
high, made of mud and boards, with half a partition to divide bedroom
from the sitting-room kitchen. If one adds a small porch filled with
dirty, half-starved dogs, and refuse of every kind, an ancient and
dilapidated stove in the sitting part of the house, two wooden benches
against the walls, a fixed rude table, some shelves nailed to the
wall, and two boarded-up beds, one has a fairly accurate description
of the furnishings. Inside were fourteen persons, sleeping there, at
any rate for a night or two. The ordinary regular family of a man and
wife and four girls was to be increased this winter by the man's
brother, his wife, and four boys from twelve months to seven years of
age. His brother had 'handy enough flour,' but no tea or molasses. The
owner was looking after Newfoundland Rooms, for which he got flour,
tea, molasses, and firewood for the winter. The people assure me that
one man, who was aboard us last fall just as we were going South,
starved to death, and many more were just able to hold out till
spring. The man, they tell me, ate his only dog as his last resource."
I sent one day a barrel of flour and some molasses to a poor widow
with seven children at Stag Islands. She was starving even in summer.
She was just eating fish, which she and her eldest girl caught, and
drinking water--no flour, no tea, nothing. Two winters before she and
her eldest girl sawed up three thousand feet of planking to keep the
wolf from the little ones. The girl managed the boat and fished in
summer, drove the dogs and komatik and did the shooting for which they
could afford powder in winter.
A man, having failed to catch a single salmon beyond what he was
forced to eat, left in his little boat to row down to the Inlet to try
for codfish. To get a meal--breakfast--and a little flour to sustain
life on the way, he had to sell his anchor before he left.
The life of the sea, with all its attractions, is at best a hazardous
calling, and it speaks loud in the praise of the capacity and simple
faith of our people that in the midst of a trying and often perilous
environment, they retain so quiet and kindly a temper of mind. During
my voyage to the seal fishery I recall that one day at three o'clock
the men were all called in. Four were missing. We did not find them
till we had been steaming for an hour and a half. They were caught on
pans some mile or so apart in couples, and were in prison. We were a
little anxious about them, but the only remark which I heard, when at
last they came aboard, was, "Leave the key of your box the next time,
Ned."
To those who claim that Labrador is a land of plenty I would offer the
following incident in refutation. At Holton on a certain Sunday
morning the leader of the church services came aboard the hospital
steamer and asked me for a Bible. Some sacrilegious pigs which had
been brought down to fatten on the fish, driven to the verge of
starvation by the scarcity of that article, had broken into the church
illicitly one night, and not only destroyed the cloth, but had
actually torn up and eaten the Bible. In reply to inquiry I gave it
as my opinion that it would be no sin to eat the pork of the erring
quadrupeds.
Once when I was cruising on the North Labrador coast I anchored one
day between two desolate islands some distance out in the Atlantic, a
locality which in those days was frequented by many fishing craft. My
anchors were scarcely down when a boat from a small Welsh brigantine
came aboard, and asked me to go at once and see a dying girl. She
proved to be the only woman among a host of men, and was servant in
one of the tiny summer fishing huts, cooking and mending for the men,
and helping with the fish when required. I found her in a rude bunk in
a dark corner of the shack. She was almost eighteen, and even by the
dim light of my lantern and in contrast with the sordid surroundings,
I could see that she was very pretty. A brief examination convinced me
that she was dying. The tender-hearted old captain, whose aid had been
called in as the only man with a doctor's box and therefore felt to be
better qualified to use it than others, was heart-broken. He had
pronounced the case to be typhoid, to be dangerous and contagious, and
had wisely ordered the fishermen, who were handling food for human
consumption, to leave him to deal with the case alone. He told me at
once that he had limited his attentions to feeding her, and that
though helpless for over a fortnight, and at times unconscious, the
patient had not once been washed or the bed changed. The result, even
with my experience, appalled me. But while there is life in a young
patient there is always hope, and we at once set to work on our Augean
task. By the strangest coincidence it was an inky dark night outside,
with a low fog hanging over the water, and the big trap boat, with a
crew of some six men, among them the skipper's sons, had been missing
since morning. The skipper had stayed home out of sympathy for his
servant girl, and his mind was torn asunder by the anxiety for the
girl and his fear for his boys.
When night fell, the old captain and I were through with the hardest
part of our work. We had new bedding on the bed and the patient clean
and sleeping quietly. Still the boat and its precious complement did
not come. Every few minutes the skipper would go out and listen, and
stare into the darkness. The girl's heart suddenly failed, and about
midnight her spirit left this world. The captain and I decided that
the best thing to do was to burn everything--and in order to avoid
publicity to do it at once. So having laboriously carried it all out
onto the edge of the cliff, we set a light to the pile and were
rewarded with a bonfire which would have made many a Guy Fawkes
celebration. Quite unintentionally we were sending out great streams
of light into the darkness over the waters away down below us, and
actually giving the longed-for signal to the missing boat. Her crew
worked their way in the fog to life and safety by means of the blazing
and poor discarded "properties" of the soul preceding us to our last
port.
Although our work has lain almost entirely among the white population
of the Labrador and North Newfoundland coasts, still it has been our
privilege occasionally to come in contact with the native races, and
to render them such services, medical or otherwise, as lay within our
power. Our doctor at Harrington on the Canadian Labrador is appointed
by the Canadian Government as Indian Agent.
Once, when my own boat was anchored in Davis Inlet, a band of roving
Indians had come to the post for barter and supplies. Our steamer was
a source of great interest to them. Our steam whistle they would
gladly have purchased, after they had mastered their first fears. At
night we showed them some distress rockets and some red and blue port
flares. The way those Indians fled from the port flares was really
amusing, and no one enjoyed it more than they did, for the shouting
and laughter, after they had picked themselves out of the scuppers
where they had been rolling on top of one another, wakened the very
hills with their echoes. Next morning one lonely-looking brave came on
board, and explained to me by signs and grunts that during the
entertainment a white counter, or Hudson Bay dollar, had rolled out of
the lining of his hat into our woodpile. An elaborate search failed to
reveal its whereabouts, but as there was no reason to doubt him, I
decided to make up the loss to him out of our clothes-bag. Fortunately
a gorgeous purple rowing blazer came readily to hand, and with this
and a helmet, both of which he put on at once, the poor fellow was
more than satisfied. Indeed, on the wharf he was the envy of the whole
band.
At night they slept in the bunkhouse, and they presented a sight which
one is not likely to forget--especially one lying on his back on the
table, with his arms extended and his head hanging listlessly over the
edge. One felt sorely tempted to put a pin into him to see if he
really were alive, but we decided to abstain for prudential reasons.
We had among the garments on board three not exactly suited to the
white settlers, so I told the agent to let the Indians have a rifle
shooting match for them. They were a fox huntsman's red broadcloth
tail-coat, with all the glory of gilt buttons, a rather dilapidated
red golf blazer, and a white, cavalryman's Eton coat, with silver
buttons, and the coat-of-arms on. Words fail me to paint the elation
of the winner of the fox hunting coat; while the wearer of the cavalry
mess jacket was not the least bit daunted by the fact that when he got
it on he could hardly breathe. I must say that he wore it over a
deerskin kossak, which is not the custom of cavalrymen, I am led to
believe.
The coast-line from Ramah to Cape Chidley is just under one hundred
miles, and on it live a few scattered Eskimo hunters. Mr. Ford knew
every one of them personally, having lived there twenty-seven years.
It appears that a larger race of Eskimos called "Tunits," to whom the
present race were slaves, used to be on this section of the coast. At
Nakvak there are remains of them. In Hebron, the same year that we met
the Indians at Davis Inlet, we saw Pomiuk's mother. Her name is
Regina, and she is now married to Valentine, the king of the Eskimos
there. I have an excellent photograph of a royal dinner party, a thing
which I never possessed before. The king and queen and a solitary
courtier are seated on the rocks, gnawing contentedly raw walrus
bones--"ivik" they call it.
The Eskimos one year suffered very heavily from an epidemic of
influenza--the germ doubtless imported by some schooner from the
South. Like all primitive peoples, they had no immunity to the
disease, and the suffering and mortality were very high. It was a
pathetic sight as the lighter received its load of rude coffins from
the wharf, with all the kindly little people gathered to tow them to
their last resting-place in the shallow sand at the end of the inlet.
The ten coffins in one grave seemed more the sequence of a battle
than of a summer sickness in Labrador. Certainly the hospital move on
the part of the Moravians deserved every commendation; though I
understand that at their little hospital in Okkak they have not always
been able to have a qualified medical man in residence.
One old man, a patient on whose hip I had operated, came and insisted
that I should examine the scars. Oddly enough during the operation the
Eskimo, who was the only available person whom I had been able to find
to hold the light, had fainted, and left me in darkness. I had
previously had no idea that their sensibilities were so akin to ours.
At Napatuliarasok Island are some lovely specimens of blue and green and
golden Labradorite, a striated feldspar with a glorious sheen. Nothing
has ever really been done with this from a commercial point of view;
moreover, the samples of gold-bearing quartz, of which such good hopes
have been entertained, have so far been found wanting also. In my
opinion this is merely due to lack of persevering investigation--for one
cannot believe that this vast area of land can be utterly unremunerative.
On one of the old maps of Labrador this terse description is written
by the cartographer: "Labrador was discovered by the English. There is
nothing in it of any value"; and another historian enlarges on the
theme in this fashion: "God made the world in five days, made Labrador
on the sixth, and spent the seventh throwing stones at it." It is so
near and yet so far, so large a section of the British Empire and yet
so little known, and so romantic for its wild grandeur, and many
fastnesses still untrodden by the foot of man! The polar current
steals from the unknown North its ice treasures, and lends them
with no niggard hand to this seaboard. There is a never-wearying charm
in these countless icebergs, so stately in size and so fantastic in
shape and colouring.
[Illustration: A LABRADOR BURIAL]
The fauna and flora of the country are so varied and exquisite that
one wonders why the world of science has so largely passed us by.
Perhaps with the advent of hydroplanes, Labrador will come to its own
among the countries of the world. Not only the ethnologist and
botanist, but the archaeologist as well reaps a rich harvest for his
labours here. Many relics of a recent stone age still exist. I have
had brought to me stone saucepans, lamps, knives, arrow-heads, etc.,
taken from old graves. It is the Eskimo custom to entomb with the dead
man all and every possession which he might want hereafter, the idea
being that the spirit of the implement accompanies the man's spirit.
Relics of ancient whaling establishments, possibly early Basque, are
found in plenty at one village, while even to-day the trapper there
needing a runner for his komatik can always hook up a whale's jaw or
rib from the mud of the harbour. Relics of rovers of the sea, who
sought shelter on this uncharted coast with its million islands, are
still to be found. A friend of mine was one day looking from his boat
into the deep, narrow channel in front of his house, when he perceived
some strange object in the mud. With help he raised it, and found a
long brass "Long Tom" cannon, which now stands on the rocks at that
place. Remains of the ancient French occupation should also be
procurable near the seat of their deserted capital near Bradore.
My friend, Professor Reginald Daly, head of the Department of Geology
at Harvard University, after having spent a summer with me on the
coast, wrote as follows:
"We crossed the Straits of Belle Isle once more, homeward bound. Old
Jacques Cartier, searching for an Eldorado, found Labrador, and in
disgust called it the 'Land of Cain.' A century and a half afterward
Lieutenant Roger Curtis wrote of it as a 'country formed of frightful
mountains, and unfruitful valleys, a prodigious heap of barren rock';
and George Cartwright, in his gossipy journal, summed up his
impressions after five and twenty years on the coast. He said, 'God
created this country last of all, and threw together there the refuse
of his materials as of no use to mankind.'
"We have learned at last the vital fact that Nature has set apart her
own picture galleries where men may resort if for a time they would
forget human contrivances. Such a wilderness is Labrador, a kind of
mental and moral sanitarium. The beautiful is but the visible splendor
of the true. The enjoyment of a visit to the coast may consist not
alone in the impressions of the scenery; there may be added the deeper
pleasure of reading out the history of noble landscapes, the
sculptured monuments of elemental strife and revolutions of distant
ages."