230 LABRADOR 



to show them to the curious at the exhibitions at Chicago, 

 Buffalo, and elsewhere. Few returned, and they richer 

 only in those heirlooms of civilization, the germs of specific 

 diseases, which most efficiently put a stop to the growth 

 of the community, and left a diseased and miserable people 

 to be a constant danger to every "Innuit" on the coast. 



Another forty miles to the south is Okkak, the largest 

 station, with some three hundred and fifty souls. It is 

 within the northern limit of trees, and consequently houses, 

 boats, and firing are more easily acquired. A large number 

 of permanent wooden houses have been erected. At cer- 

 tain seasons of the year considerable social life is possible. 

 The annual census shows that during the fifty years pre- 

 vious to 1902 the congregation was steadily growing in 

 numbers. Some small arts and crafts were established and 

 quite a trade done in ivory carvings, in modern skin dolls, 

 tubiks or tents, kayaks, etc., and in wooden models of na- 

 tive houses, komatiks, and such like. Sickness imported 

 by families returning from the exhibitions, overcrowding 

 and lack of sanitation with its inevitable shadow, con- 

 sumption, epidemics arising from the increasing contact 

 with the white fishermen who fish in hundreds on what 

 once the Eskimo considered " their grounds," have shorn 

 the settlement of much of its original strength. 



The Brethren here now have a little hospital besides their 

 educational and religious work. At first the "Innuits" 

 would not subject themselves to the necessary hospital 

 regulations. We carried thither the first patients in our 

 little hospital steamer. A severe epidemic of grippe (with 

 heart troubles and other complications) was killing many. 

 We had picked up a full load, and dumped them on the new 



