A LABRADOR SPRING 



faded pieces of coloured cloth against the 

 weather. One little boy of three or four years 

 wore a long fur coat with skin side out, and a 

 hood that dangled at his back. When I tried 

 to photograph him he screamed with terror and 

 hid behind his mother. Doubtless he thought 

 me an Iroquois. A pitiable cripple, an aged 

 child with shrunken body and twisted ex- 

 tremities, scurried prone like a hideous great 

 spider over the sands, scaled the sides of a 

 canoe and dropped into its depths. 



Pipe-smoking was well nigh universal, and 

 not confined to the men, nor to the adults. I 

 shall always remember the picture made on the 

 background of this bleak shore by a buxom 

 young matron, with the usual coquettish 

 rosettes of hair before her ears and her jaunty 

 red and blue liberty cap, a tight fitting red 

 woollen bodice, green plaid skirt, so short as to 

 fully display stout legs clad in thick woollen 

 stockings of red and white and in embroidered 

 moccasins, striding over the sands, smoking a 

 pipe, and bearing, as carelessly and as easily as if 

 they had been of feather-weight, a lusty papoose 

 in her arms and a large pack on her shoulders. 



It was a busy and confusing scene, and one 



164 



