136 THE LABRADOR PENINSULA. chap. xxix. 



reaped a rich harvest of otters, martens, and foxes. A 

 single trapper, assisted by three children, took more than 

 eisfhteen hmidred dollars' worth of skms durino; that 

 winter. In ordinary years the winter's hunt is always 

 remunerative on that river, the chief hunting-ground 

 being from forty to sixty miles from its mouth. 



Some conception of the terribly sterile character of mucli 

 of the coast away from the great rivers and west of Cape 

 "Whittle, may be formed from the fact that at the Bay of 

 Tabatiere the missionaries found difficulty in procuring 

 sufficient earth to form a burying-ground. At some of 

 the stations bodies have been buried in clefts and crevices 

 of the rocks, in consequence of the impossibility of finding 

 sufficient soil to cover them. This absence of surface soil 

 is characteristic of this ]3art of tlie coast, as well as of the 

 sides and summits of rocky hills and of a large portion of 

 the central plateau. 



The shores of Hamilton Inlet have already been 

 described, with their waU-like boundary formed by tlie 

 Mealy Mountains on the south side of the inlet. The 

 most important river draining the vast table-land of the 

 Peninsula falls into this bay. The Ashwanipi or Hamilton 

 Eiver, rising in the rear of Seven Islands, near the head- 

 waters of the east branch of the Moisie, is the great river 

 of Labrador. It is nearly a mile and a half broad at its 

 mouth, which is situated at the head of the inlet, and 

 twenty-five miles up the river its breadth varies from a 

 quarterof a mile to one-eighth of a mile, from Avhich dimen- 

 sions it does not change to any great extent as far as it 

 has been examined. About one hundred miles from its 

 mouth the great falls and rapids occur, which extend 



