FOREWORD 



BY WILFRED T. GRENFELL 



HAVING selected for myself a role in life that compels 

 me to pass most of my days along the coasts of Labrador, 

 I have come to love the rugged fastnesses of my adopted 

 country, and to lament the amount of almost Stygian dark- 

 ness that hangs still over it and its resources. With re- 

 gard to the future of this vast area, nearly half a million 

 square miles, I am myself an optimist. True it is that 

 the great tide of humanity flowing ever westward has for 

 the most part passed it by, leaving it lone and frigid in 

 its polar waters. But the hand of man has grappled with 

 harder problems than this presents. 



A scientific man has but recently transformed the use- 

 less flora of hitherto arid deserts into food for man and 

 beast ; at the bidding of an engineer water is now flowing 

 over the sands of Southern California, and land of perhaps 

 unrivalled fertility is the result. Man's hand has dammed 

 the royal Nile, so long prodigal of her unfettered waters ; 

 and a vast, new kingdom is springing into being. A 

 college man has given his skill to acclimatizing fruit and 

 vegetables to Dakotan frosts, and we have a plum that 

 withstands a temperature of forty degrees below zero 

 Fahrenheit, and strawberries that will live in the open 

 all winter even in that climate. 



