82 ' H. P. STEENSBY. 
; As regards the supply of wood for boats and implements, the Labrador 
| Eskimo procure this not only from drift-wood, and from the willows and 
alders of the coast, but also by travelling 40—100 kilometres up the course 
of the rivers, which brings them within the forest-limit. Such sledge journeys 
are made during winter by the inhabitants of the north-eastern coasts’. 
In contradistinction to the inhabitants of Baffin Land and Greenland, 
whose distribution is limited only by natural conditions, the Labrador Eskimo 
are excluded from the interior of.the country by the presence of the Indians. 
As might be expected, the relations between the two people are of a 
hostile character because both aspire to the lordship of the reindeer hunting 
in the coastal districts. Since the Eskimo must be regarded as having 
immigrated from the north across Hudson Strait, we may be justified in 
concluding that they were the last to arrive. This, however, does not appear. 
to be the case. According to Lucien M. Turner, who has made Labrador 
the object of a thorough ethnographical investigation, the Indians were the 
last to immigrate. On the basis of the folklore of the two people and on 
their own traditional ideas, the author in question thinks that he can prove 
that the Indian population of the interior and northern districts of Labrador 
have immigrated at a comparatively late period; perhaps they have been 
expelled from the south. The fact of their being Algonkin Indians favours 
the belief that they have come from the regions between the St. Lawrence 
and the Hudson, but the question whether they found the Eskimo on the 
coasts and whether these were at that time the only inhabitants of Labrador 
does not require any answer in this connection. The same is applicable to 
the other interesting question regarding the previous distribution of the 
Eskimo along the coasts of the Atlantic, which is connected with the problem 
of the Scandinavian Greenlander’s collision with the Eskimo or the Indians. 
As the example from the west coast of Greenland shows, the Eskimo Arctic 
culture may very well be changed into a more Subarctic form if only a 
sufficient abundance of marine mammals is present, but it must be maintained 
that on a coast in the temperate zone the Eskimo culture must lose all its 
peculiar character, or it would, in other words, meet an anthropogeogra- 
phical limit. It is probable that the Gulf of St. Lawrence has formerly been 
inhabited by an Eskimo population, which, however, even in the days of 
“discovery” were greatly hustled by the Algonkin Abenakies; till somewhat 
within the 17th century the eastern part of the north coast of the Gulf of 
St. Lawrence is said to have been inhabited by the Eskimo. At the present — 
day Hamilton Fjord, at 54° N. lat., is the southern limit of the Eskimo; 
but they formerly lived at the Strait of Belle Isle, and even in historic times 
occasionally visited Newfoundland, whence they fetched wood®. But their 
standing in these southern regions was probably one of contest. So long a8 
the region in question has been visited by Europeans the Abenakies have 
made war on the Eskimo; but even if the former have been the last to 
* A.S. Packarp, II, p. 69. 
* A.S. Packarn, I, pp. 245, 252, 257, etc. 
