CHAPTER I

_THE COUNTRY_

[Illustration]

It is said that a recent trial, over a dispute about the fishery of a small natural harbour in Labrador, called Tub Harbour, had reached its third day, when his lordship, leaning over the desk, whispered to counsel, “Where is Labrador”? Not to be caught, however, the counsel whispered back, “In Tub Harbour, my lord.” Geography, it seems, is a sadly neglected science.

Such being the case, I have ventured to describe the general features of the country in the terse, accurate, graphic, and authoritative words of the _Encyclopædia Britannica_.

“Labrador, properly so called,” says the _Encyclopædia_, “is the peninsular portion of North America, bounded by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the North Atlantic, Hudson Straits, Hudson Bay, and vaguely defined towards the S.W. by Rupert’s River, Mistassini River, and Bersiamits River. Its greatest length is 1,100 miles, its greatest breadth 700 miles. The area is approximately 420,000 square miles, that is, as large as the British Isles, France, and Austria. The coast from Blanc Sablon, a spot 85 miles up the Straits of Belle Isle, to Cape Chidley at the entrance to Hudson Bay straits, and all the off-lying islands, with the country inland about 70 miles, are under the government of Newfoundland. The rest is part of the province of Quebec, under Canadian rule.”

Sterile and forbidding it lies among fogs and icebergs, famous only besides for dogs and cod. “God made this country last,” says an old navigator. “He had no other view in end than to throw together here the refuse of His materials as of no use to mankind.”

“As a permanent abode of civilized man,” says the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, “Labrador is, on the whole, one of the most uninviting spots on the face of the earth. A vast tableland occupies much of the interior. This plateau, says Professor Hind, is pre-eminently sterile, and where the country is not burned, caribou moss covers the rocks, with stunted spruce, birch, and aspens in the hollows and deep ravines. The whole is strewed with an infinite number of boulders often three and four deep. Language fails to paint the awful desolation of the tableland of the Labrador peninsula. The Atlantic coast is the edge of a vast solitude of rocky hills, split and blasted by frosts, and beaten by waves. Headlands, grim and naked, tower over the waters—often fantastic and picturesque in shape—while miles and miles of rocky precipices or tame monotonous slopes alternate with stony valleys, winding away among the blue hills of the interior.”

The cliffs rise from the ocean to a height of from 500 to 1,000 feet. The watershed of the interior plateau is on an average 150 miles from the coast, and rises considerably over 5,000 feet. Near Cape Chidley the hills are close to the sea, rising to the height of 6,000 feet, and the view from the sea is magnificent. A powerful current coming from Hudson Bay, combined with the great rise and fall of tide, renders navigation here very dangerous. A high, bare peak of syenite, inland from Cape Harrison, and known as Mount Misery, is visible seventy-five miles.

We are accustomed to think of Columbus as discovering America, but it seems certain that about the year 1000, while Northman and Saxon were struggling for pre-eminence in this England of ours, bold Vikings from Iceland visited Labrador. In the Sagas of Erik the Red and of Thorfinn Karlsefne, we read of a strange land they visited and called Vinland[1] or Wineland, which most probably was Labrador.

[Footnote 1: See Hon. L. G. Power’s paper on “Vinland,” read before the Nova Scotia Historical Society in 1887.]

Now, it is needless to say grapes do not abound in Labrador, and we southerners should not describe it now as the “Land of Wine.” But we must remember that Erik came from Iceland, and was also possibly addicted to the proverbial fault of travellers. Moreover, when Erik returned from one of his voyages he called the land he had visited “Greenland,” not with reference to its nature, because Biarni, a contemporary voyager, describes it as a land of “mountains and high ice hills,” but “he called it Greenland because, quoth he, people will be attracted thither if the land has a good name.” An amusing incident, which I quote from Mr. Power’s paper, arose out of this. When Thorfinn Karlsefne and Snorri were making an endeavour to colonize the “Vinland” they most inappropriately ran short of provisions. Now it so happened they had with them Thorhall, the hunter. “He was a large man and strong, black and like a giant, silent and foul-mouthed in his speech, and always egged on Erik to the worst; he was a bad Christian; he was well acquainted with uninhabited parts. Thorhall now suddenly disappeared. They had previously made prayers to God for food, but it did not come so quick as they thought their necessities required. They searched after Thorhall three days, and found him on the top of a rock; there he lay, and looked up in the sky and gaped with both nose and mouth, and murmured something. They asked him why he had gone there. He said it was no business of theirs. They bade him come home with them, and he did so. Soon after, came there a whale, and they went thither and cut it up, and no one knew what sort of whale it was; and when the cook dressed it, they ate it, and all became ill in consequence. Then said Thorhall: “The red bearded was more helpful than your Christ; this have I got now for my verses that I sung to Thor, my protector. Seldom has he deserted me. But when they came to know this they cast the whole whale into the sea, and resigned their case to God. Then the weather improved, and it was possible to row out fishing, and they were not then in want of food, for wild beasts were caught on the land, and fish in the sea, and eggs collected on the island.” Now, when Thorhall bore water to the ship, and drank, then sang he this song:—

“People told me when I came Hither, all would be so fine; The good Wineland, known to fame, Rich in fruits and choicest wine; Now the water pail they send To the fountain I must bend, Nor from out this land divine Have I quaffed _one drop_ of wine.”

[Illustration: Entrance to St. Johns Harbour.]

And when they were ready, and hoisted sail, then chanted Thorhall—

“Let our trusty band Haste to Fatherland; Let our vessel brave Plough the angry wave; While those few who love Wineland, here may rove, Or, with idle toil Fetid whales may boil, Here on Furderstrand Far from Fatherland.”

So that Vinland, in the year 1000, to which this voyage had been made because “the people of Brattahliel began to talk much about it,” saying, “a voyage thither ought to be particularly profitable by reason of the fertility of the soil,” appears to have turned out no better than we found Labrador in 1891. The famous log-books of George Cartwright,[2] written about 1790, give a more reliable account of the country, and he appears at first to have found it profitable to make voyages thither. The animals, and not the vegetables, engaged his attention, and he would have made a remunerative business of it had not first pirates and then privateers despoiled him of his ships, and outfits, and wares.

[Footnote 2: _Journals of George Cartwright._]

In Labrador now, work as he may, one man cannot keep the wolf from the door—the Eskimo and natives of the coast, the mountaineer and hunter Indians of the interior, and the white settlers, are alike often face to face with starvation. The two former are rapidly dying out, while among the latter it is only where a settler has grown-up sons to work with him, and a good supply of stock in boats, nets, traps and guns to help him, that he can make anything approaching to what we in England should consider a respectable living. Even with these helps, and with steady, hard work, and with sound health, he seldom can hope to lay up store against times of misfortune. True in England the poor often see hard times, and have to face occasionally poverty and hunger. Moreover, as Richard Whitbourne, that plucky British sea-dog, says,[3] “It hath beene in some winters so hard frozen, aboue London bridge near the court, that the tenderest faire ladies and gentlewomen that are in any part of the world, who have beheld it, and great numbers of people, have there sported on the ice many dayes, and have felt it colder there, than men doe here, that live in Newfoundland.” Yet we must take into consideration that here absolute want is the exception, there the rule.

[Footnote 3: Richard Whitbourne.]