186 LABRADOR 



In the nearer regions, service at guiding and with survey- 

 ing or exploring parties as voyageurs is resorted to con- 

 siderably by men of more or less Indian blood, but the dark 

 Indian accepts such employment rather reluctantly. His 

 light bodily frame, in fact, is not well suited to heavy 

 work. The voyageurs of the north par excellence are Scotch 

 or French mixed breeds, men not infrequently of unusual 

 bone and strength. Although Dr. Low regards the modern 

 Montagnais as rather improved in sturdiness by the long 

 infiltration of white blood which began with the days of 

 the Coureurs des Bois and early fur trade, the slighter 

 build usual in the northern group is tolerably common. 



Occasional association with modern operations along 

 the nearer borders has not much changed the inland life 

 of the people. The interior is still an Indian possession, 

 where no white man makes his home, and the only law is 

 the immemorial code of lodge and hunting-ground. The 

 whole inland, and indeed almost all the coasts, remains 

 given over to the hunting life. 



The Indians, always diminishing in numbers, may be 

 reckoned at some three or four thousand at the present 

 time. Of these the Montagnais, who are all tributary to 

 Gulf or Saguenay trading-stations, make up more than half. 

 It is difficult to arrive at a census of such a wandering 

 people, for in one year and another some of them appear 

 successively upon coasts remotely apart. The lists of 

 names at such far-distant trading-stations are rarely com- 

 pared with each other, while the names of the Indians are 

 somewhat subject to change, and at best are not always 

 easy to identify. 



About the great lakes of the central area the people 



