300 LABRADOR 



for even well-found craft of that tonnage to live through 

 them. 



Owing to the method of fishing, it is of paramount im- 

 portance to secure a good place for the trap-net. A fisher- 

 man may have built a summer house and stage, have left 

 boats and gear and salt on the coast, and yet if he comes 

 down a day after another man, he may find his trap-net 

 berths already seized by the crew of some schooner an- 

 chored near. The late comer may, therefore, after all, 

 have little chance of getting a cargo or " voyage." He has 

 usually no chance of going elsewhere to look for one. Fish 

 "sets in shore" as soon as the ice opens, possibly even 

 before. "Snapper" men will be able, by going early, to 

 run home with a "voyage" from the southernmost section 

 of the coast, and get down in time for another in the far 

 north, before it is too late for fish. The result is that the 

 rush north commences long before the ice is gone, and craft 

 are everywhere pushing north through lanes and leads in 

 the ice, taking incalculable risks which occasionally end 

 in disaster. The admirable skill and magnificent handling 

 of their vessels succeed in averting accidents to a degree 

 which surprises one the more he is familiar with the in- 

 cidents of such a journey. 



As if these were not sufficient troubles, the heavy fogs 

 which do prevail at times off the Labrador coast are most 

 common in the spring of the year, and not a single pre- 

 caution in the way of a warning bell or fog-horn has yet 

 been placed to help the schooners from one end of Labrador 

 to the other, except the Canadian station at Point Amour, 

 sixty miles up the Strait of Belle Isle, where there is a steam 

 fog-horn. Until two years ago, not a single light of any 



