TRANSFER FROM EUROPE TO AMERICA 13 



— for of the total population half are women and children — over 

 an area the size of two-thirds of Europe — I ask you frankly, do 

 you think they are going to exterminate the game very fast ? Re- 

 member the climate of the North takes care of her own. White 

 men can stand only so many years of that lonely cold, and they 

 have to come out ; or they dwarf and degenerate. 



Take a single section of this great Northern fur preserve — Lab- 

 rador, which I visited some years ago. In area, Labrador is 530,000 

 square miles, two and a half times the size of France, twice the size 

 of Germany, twice that of former Austria-Hungary. Statistical books 

 set the population down at 4000 ; but the Moravian missionaries 

 there told me that including the Eskimos who come down the coast 

 in summer and the fishermen who come up the coast in summer 

 the total population was probably 17,000. Now Labrador is one of 

 the finest game preserves in the world. On its rocky hills and 

 watery upper barrens where settlement can never come are to be 

 found silver fox — the finest in the world, so fine that the Revillons 

 have established a fur-trading post for silver fox on one of the 

 islands — cross fox almost as fine as silver, black and red fox, the 

 best otter in the world, the finest marten in America, bear of every 

 variety, very fine Norway lynx, fine ermine, rabbit or hare galore, 

 very fine wolverine, fisher, muskrat, coarse harp seal, wolf, caribou, 

 beaver, a few mink. Is it common sense to think the population 

 of a few thousands can hunt out a fur empire here the size of two 

 Germanys ? 



Now take another look at the map ! Where the Saskatchewan 

 takes a great bend 300 miles north-east of Prince Albert, it is no 

 longer a river — it is a vast muskeg of countless still amber water 

 channels not twice the width of your canoe and quaking silt islands 

 of sand and goose grass — ideal, hidden and almost impenetrable 

 for small game. Always muskeg marks the limit of big game and 

 the beginning of the ground of the little fellows — waupoos, the 

 rabbit, and musquash, the muskrat, and sakwasew, the mink, and 

 nukik, the otter and wuchak or pekan, the fisher. It is a safe wager 



