a | Townsenp, In Audubon’s Labrador. 133 
IN AUDUBON’S LABRADOR. 
BY CHARLES W. TOWNSEND, M. D. 
Plates III-V. 
Ever since my boyhood when I read Audubon’s ‘Birds of 
America,’ with its frequent references to the Labrador coast, 
I have longed to follow the great ornithologist’s footsteps in those 
regions. In 1906, on a visit to eastern Labrador, I had a glimpse 
of Bradore and Blane Sablon the termination of Audubon’s trip, 
and in 1909 and 1912, I reached, from the west, the starting point 
of his trip at Natashquan and looked eagerly into the promised 
land. After another interval of three years, I was able, in 1915, to 
carry out my longed for plan and explore the intervening two 
hundred and fifty miles — Audubon’s Labrador. 
It was on June 6, 1833, that John James Audubon, the gréat 
ornithologist, sailed from Eastport, Maine, on his long contemplated 
trip to Labrador. With him, as assistants in his work of procuring 
specimens, were five young men, all between eighteen and twenty- 
one years of age. ‘These were his son, John Woodhouse Audubon, 
the father of Miss Maria R. Audubon, who has preserved for us in 
‘Audubon and His Journals,’ the valuable records of her grand- 
father’s life; William Ingalls and George C. Shattuck, afterwards 
physicians of prominence in Boston, both of whom in their ripe old 
age, I was privileged to know; Thomas Lincoln and Joseph 
Coolidge. 
Under the command of Captain Emery, the top-sail schooner 
Ripley of one hundred and six tons burden, carried this inter- 
esting company through the Straits of Canseau, touched at the 
Magdalen Islands, passed the famous Bird Rock, white as snow 
from the vast multitude of birds, and, on June 17, reached the coast 
of the Labrador Peninsula, at the little port of Natashquan or 
American Harbor, as it was then called. The young men, incited 
by the enthusiasm of their leader, were all eagerness to explore 
the new and strange region, a land of bog and rock, of dwarfed vege- 
tation and lingering snowbanks. One of the first fruits of their 
