FISH 203 



Hamilton Inlet is also south of Cape Webeck, which was 

 soon afterwards the northern limit of the Newfoundlanders. 

 Fort Chimmo was situated 'amid moss-covered rocks, 

 without vegetation and without verdure ... as complete 

 a picture of desolation as can be imagined ',* and the overland 

 routes from Fort Chimmo to the south-west and south- 

 east were equally barren ; but North-west House and Rigou- 

 lette, as the factories on Hamilton Inlet were called, proved 

 serviceable depots for the Indian furriers of the interior. 

 There, and more recently at Nachvak, Davis Inlet, Cart- 

 wright, and elsewhere, the Company overlapped the Moravians 

 from the north, and the Newfoundlanders overlapped the 

 Company from the south ; and the three streams of tendency 

 interlaced and passed into one another's boundaries without 

 mingling, for they represented different cults and quests. The 

 Company were after the Indians, and the Indians were after 

 land-mammals ; the Moravians were after the Eskimos, and 

 the Eskimos were after sea-mammals ; and the New- 

 foundlanders were after cod, or, if they settled, after 

 cod, herring, salmon, and seals, which they caught with 

 seines. Each stream represented a distinct type, and now- 

 adays each of the three streams, except the Moravian stream, 

 has overflowed the whole east coast of Labrador and remains 

 distinct. The Moravians still keep to the north of Cape 

 Webeck, occupying Makkovik(i899), Hopedale, Nain, Okkak, 

 Hebron, Rama (1871), and more recently Port Burwell at 

 Cape Chudleigh, and controlling 1,200 to 1,300 Eskimos and 

 half-breeds. 



The ship-fisheries were now conducted from a base in The mer- 

 Newfoundland instead of from a base in Europe as in old L^^*^ 

 times ; nevertheless, they still retained the mediaeval charac- ship-fisher- 

 teristics which they presented in the sixteenth, seventeenth, l ^f r tcc 

 and eighteenth centuries. No wages were paid, but the market is 



1 John Maclean, Twenty Years' Service in the Hudson Bay Territory, 

 1849, vol. ii, p. 75. 



