32 LABRADOR 



"all rights to trade and commerce of those seas, etc., 

 within the entrance of Hudson's Strait, and all lands on 

 the coasts and confines thereof." Their claim to Labrador 

 was submitted to the law officers of the British crown in 

 1752, and pronounced by them to be valid. It was not, 

 however, till 1831 that the company began to exploit 

 Labrador. In that year, having learned from a missionary 

 report that the country about Ungava produced excellent 

 furs, and being desirous also of "ameliorating the condi- 

 tion of the natives," they founded Fort Chimo on Hudson's 

 Strait. A year or so later they established at the other 

 end of Labrador Rigolet Post, near the head of Hamilton 

 Inlet. It was the desire to establish communications 

 between these two posts that led to the wonderful over- 

 land journey of John M'Lean, the factor at Fort Chimo, 

 in 1838, a journey which has not been repeated until within 

 the last few years. M'Lean's Notes of a Twenty-five Years 1 

 Service in the Hudson's Bay Territories is worth reading 

 as an earlier version of the lure of the Labrador wild. 



In 1870 the great company surrendered all its rights in 

 British North America to the Dominion of Canada, in return 

 for a substantial quid pro quo. All that part of Labrador, 

 therefore, which does not belong to Newfoundland, comes 

 under the jurisdiction of the Dominion. 



There remains to be told the story of the Moravian 

 missionaries. No more wonderful story of missionary 

 effort has ever awaited the pen of the reporter; and yet 

 the work of the Moravian Mission in Labrador has been 

 little known. It was in 1752 that the United Society of 

 Brethren first attempted to found a mission there among 





