160 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



some of them all of the men were thus affected. They seemed 

 to regard the woe as in the course of nature to be borne as all 

 else of their hard lives must be borne. We had a lot of anti- 

 scorbutics laid in for such use, which proved helpful. I knew 

 little about it, yet I knew that the great need was of a vegetable 

 diet. So I persuaded them to eat the leaves of the Rumex Ace- 

 tosella, which for a long season are plentiful in all this part of 

 the world. My patients, as I saw them from time to time in the 

 summer, seemed to prosper. They were grateful and offered 

 payment in fish, their only store. In fact, I gained by my 

 medical service, which was kept well within narrow limits, a 

 curious place with these people, who were in need of such help. 

 From Anticosti we went to the Hudson's Bay Station of Min- 

 gan and the neighboring part of Labrador, where we spent a 

 week or so examining the interesting geology of the coast, and 

 watching the Indians, who in considerable numbers had come 

 in for their annual trading. They came out of the wilderness, 

 through its tangle of waterways, with great bundles of furs, and, 

 in exchange, took back their trifling return of guns, ammuni- 

 tion, tea, etc. It was a hard bargaining they had to do with 

 the officers of the factory. I saw, for instance, a razeed flintlock 

 musket, dear at two dollars, bartered for a lot of furs which 

 would certainly have sold for a hundred in Boston. The head 

 factor, who received us very kindly when our official letter was 

 shown, was, as seemed to be the rule in those days in the great 

 company, a Scotchman, as were his helpers. Apparently he 

 had the natives in perfect control, which was kindly but of an 

 inevitable quality. They submitted to him as well-trained 

 children to a father. He spoke their language with fluency, 

 settled their quarrels, cared for their maladies, was a kind of 

 god to them. He made one insistent request of us, that we 

 should not trade with his people ; but if we desired to bargain 

 for anything, he would manage the trade for us. This, he said, 

 was the one rule to which the officer of the company had to 

 subject his guests. It was plain enough that the moderat 



