THE PEOPLE OF THE COAST 175 



The best educated people in the country at present are 

 the Eskimo. Almost without exception they can read 

 and write. Many can play musical instruments, share 

 in part singing, and are well able to keep accounts, and 

 know the value of things. These accomplishments, entirely 

 and solely due to the Moravian missionaries, have largely 

 helped them to hold their own in trade, a faculty for want 

 of which almost every aboriginal race is apt to suffer so 

 severely. 



I have known an Eskimo called in to read and to write 

 a letter for a Newfoundland fisherman, and I have had 

 more than once to ask one to help me by playing our own 

 harmonium for us at a service, because not one of a large 

 audience could do so. I have heard more than one Eskimo 

 stand up and deliver an excellent impromptu speech. Read- 

 ing the Newfoundland Blue Books, reporting the numbers 

 able to read and write in Labrador, I acquired an entirely 

 erroneous estimate of the people's accomplishments in 

 those directions. Our white population is still very largely 

 illiterate. Some headway has, however, been made of 

 late years, and literature and loan libraries distributed 

 through the Labrador Mission are now accessible all along 

 the coast, and are creating a love of reading. 



There are practically no alcoholic liquors sold in Labra- 

 dor. Not a licensed house exists. If liquor is sold at 

 all, it is in very small quantities and clandestinely in what 

 we know as " shebeens/' To obtain convictions for 

 breaches of the really very stringent liquor laws is not 

 easy. In ten years' cruising the coast, I have only been 

 able to convict five "shebeeners, " and I will candidly admit 

 that I lose no opportunities. 



