CHAPTER II

_NATURAL FEATURES_

Labrador rocks are of the oldest formation (Laurentian gneiss), and destitute of remains of animal or plant life; so that they, too, maintain the general harmony of desolation. On the south shore, lower Silurian sandstones, red syenite, and one splendid mass of basalt, known as the “Devil’s Table,” crop out.

[Illustration: A shoal of caplin jumping out on to the beach.]

The action of ice and fire are shown in marvellous manners on this weird coast. Not only is every rock, mountain, and pinnacle crowned with countless boulders, which seem but to need a shake to set myriads tumbling down every incline, but the whole coast is carved and chiselled in a wondrous manner by a glacial period that lasted much longer than in Europe; while the fierce frost of winter has blasted mighty rocks, and left, wherever a resting-place could be found, huge fragments, jagged and rough, “hurled aloft, as they appear, by the hands of Titans.”[4]

[Footnote 4: Packard’s _The Labrador Coast_.]

That long before the ice period volcanic fires helped to mould the hills, is well shown by the out-crop here and again of trap rocks. Especially near the hospital at Indian Harbour is this the case, where the light and polished quartzite rocks are capped with black trap rocks which have overflowed them. These rocks are marked with deep half-moon shaped cuts, running east and west—done by ice—and “showing that Hamilton Inlet, which at the mouth is forty miles wide, was once filled with an enormous glacier.”[5]

[Footnote 5: _Ibid._]

Near Hopedale a beautiful blue and bronze iridescent felspar is found. It is called labradorite,[6] and when polished glistens in the sunlight like a peacock’s feather. It is used for brooches, and occasionally for ornamenting buildings. We dropped anchor one night near an island almost entirely composed of this.

[Footnote 6: _Ibid._, gives fuller information.]

Copper pyrites, mica, asbestos, with salts of some of the rarer metals, such as yttrium and rubidium, have been found on the coast. One mining company works for labradorite during the summer.

In the inlets and along the rivers some trees and arctic plants are found. These are more especially spruces, larches, mosses, and lichens. Birches, aspen, silver fir, willow, cherry, and mountain ash, however, exist in favourable spots. I have seen good 60 ft. spars from the end of Sandwich Bay. The trees get more and more dwarfed as one goes north, and beyond the 59th parallel the merest scrub exists. The botanical aspect, however, which chiefly interests the settlers, is the number of edible berries, which form a valuable addition to their articles of diet. These are bakeapples or cloudberries, cranberries, whortleberries, bilberries, tea-berries, gooseberries, raspberries, and currants. They are preserved in water, or in molasses when it is obtainable, against the winter.

Very few vegetables can be grown, though with care, up the inlets a few potatoes, cabbages, and turnip tops have been raised. The Moravian missionaries have to cover their vegetables up at night to keep them warm. This lack of vegetables is tritely expressed in the diary of a gentleman wintering on the north coast; the entry describing his diet runs as follows—

—— ditto. —— ditto. —— ditto. —— ditto. —— found a blade of grass. Eat the whole of it.

Cartwright (1786) adds a list of his own of indigenous vegetable delicacies—

1. Young osier leaves. 2. Red dock leaves. 3. Scurvy grass. 4. Alexander, or wild celery. 5. Indian salad. 6. Alpine plant. 7. Fathen.

There is a charming catholicity about this old sea-dog and trapper.

The tips of the young spruce branches are used for making a non-intoxicating beer, being boiled with molasses. When other tea gives out, the leaves of _uva ursi_ are used. These are known as Labrador tea.[7]

[Footnote 7: _Ledum latifolium_ is also called Labrador tea.]

The Saga of Lief Erikson thus describes a conversation between the Viking and his old henchman Tyrker, who, for two or three days, had wandered from the party: “Why wert thou so late, my fosterer, and separated from the party?” “I have not been much further off, but still I have something new to tell of: I found grapes and vines.” “But is that true, my fosterer?” quoth Lief. “Surely is it true,” replied he; “for I was bred up where there is no want of either vines or grapes.” They said that next day they _filled their long boat_ with grapes. But we must, I fear, consider this a “traveller’s licence,” as we must also when old Richard Whitbourne describes the wild berries of Newfoundland. “There the summer naturally produceth out of the fruitful woombe of the earthe, without the labour of man’s hand, great plenty of greene pease and fitches faire, round, full and wholesome ... great store of hay also.... Then have you here strauberries red and white, and as faire rasberries and gooseberries as there be in England; as also multitudes of bilberries, which are called by some whortes, and many other delicate berries, which I cannot name, in great abundance.

Peares, Sowre cherries, Filberds,

of which divers times eating their fill, I never heard of any man whose health was thereby any way impaired.”

The rivers contain salmon for about one month in the summer. These seem, however, to be very susceptible to cold, and are seldom taken north of Hopedale. In seasons when the drift ice remains long on the coast the number of salmon caught is always largely diminished. They seldom take a fly. On the other hand the trout are very voracious, very large and numerous, and will rise at any bait.[8] They remain all the year, and are easily caught in winter by cutting a hole in the ice and letting down a hook with a bit of raw meat. The women largely replenish their larder in this way. Cod are far and away the most important of all Labrador products at present—they are called “fish,” and even in legal terms are the only denizens of the sea recognised as “fish.” In summer they come into shallow water, first in pursuit of a small fish known as “caplin,” and then remain probably to spawn before seeking the deeper water in winter. It is unlikely that in their migrations they cross any large portion of the Atlantic.

[Footnote 8: There is a large salmon-trout fishery at Ungava.]

The caplin come to the shallow water in countless myriads to spawn. They are somewhat like a sardine, only a little larger. At times they blacken the water, and so crowd one another as they swim along the very edge of the water in calm weather that every ripple of the sea leaves numbers struggling on the strand, till at times the whole beach is hidden by dead and dying fish. Further north these caplin visit the shore later in the year. They are followed always by immense numbers of cod. I have seen cod also so thick that even in deep water there seemed no room for them, their backs being constantly out of water. This is called the “caplin school,” and on the catch of cod during their visit the success of a whole fishery will depend.

While the “caplin school” lasts the most intense excitement exists. The men will work day and night, with scarcely an hour in twenty-four for sleep, even eating their meals in their boats. The cod at this time will not take bait, and are caught in traps in the way described in a subsequent chapter, or are hauled in a huge seine, by which a “school” is surrounded. Alas, sometimes so many icebergs are driven inshore, that the precious time slips by without any opportunity of fishing, though all the men, with boats and gear, are waiting on shore in the greatest anxiety to be “up and at the fish.” The caplin are sometimes smoked and kept for food, but usually are dried on the rocks for dog food in winter. Messrs. Munn, of Harbour Grace, have tinned them like sardines, and they are then excellent eating. The sea also affords “hair” seals; these are caught in nets in the fall of the year, or are shot swimming in the bays in summer time. Whales are common on the coast, but the people now have no means of taking them. I saw two small right-whales which had been washed up on the beach, and also one very large sperm whale. Fourteen hundred gallons of oil was taken from his head. So long ago as the 15th century, before the discovery of America, Basque whalers are said to have fished these waters. In the far north, at Ungava, the Hudson’s Bay people make a regular attempt to intercept the large schools of porpoises. At times they will get as many as 150, some individuals weighing a ton each. They are used for their skin and fat, and their flesh for dog food. This is put raw into old flour barrels, and then buried in the ground, usually in June, and in October it will be dug up again. Decomposition will have made the flesh swell up, and the barrels will have burst. As, however, the whole is now frozen, the wood can be removed, and the barrel-shaped masses of frozen and unsavoury flesh are stored away for the dogs’ repasts.