172 LABRADOR 



on the coast. All the rest is spent on summer post-offices, 

 and providing for sick fishermen. Five hundred dollars 

 a year appears to be the amount granted to make Labra- 

 dor habitable in winter. 



As the revenue from its inhabitants direct is certainly 

 $150,000 per annum, and the indirect revenue from the 

 fishery so large, this does not seem fair. The Labrador 

 people must purchase every supply from Newfoundland, 

 from a rifle, a trap, a net, to flour, pork, and potatoes. 

 I have seen a cargo of potatoes turned back home from 

 the boundary at Blanc Sablon because they were grown 

 in Prince Edward Island, and the taxation was far too high 

 for the settlers at Forteau and Red Bay to be able to 

 afford them. Yet they could get no potatoes from New- 

 foundland, could grow none, suffered from hunger for want 

 of vegetables in spring, and some were being fed every 

 year on government flour during the long winter months. 



The testimony of hundreds of my friends who live in 

 Labrador, among them men who have lived in the United 

 States, England, Scotland, Canada, Norway, and elsewhere, 

 is that Labrador is by no means a bad country to settle 

 in, but it is handicapped by having too little government 

 encouragement given to people to live there. 



The reindeer project, backed only by the Canadian 

 government and by private friends, I shall leave to another 

 chapter. 



One other great drawback to settling is the impossibility 

 of either getting grants of land or buying land with good 

 title in Labrador. This partly arises from the unsettled 

 question of ownership. For nobody knows the boundary 

 between Newfoundland and Canada. Grants of timber 



