'^*' OP THR -^ 



'university; 



INTRODUCTION. 



LABRADOR : ITS DISCOVERY AND ITS LOCATION. 



The coast of Labrador is well known to you all, as it figures on 

 your maps and on your charts. There are probably very few who 

 do not recollect this little oblong plateau as it appears thus jutting 

 eastward into the Straits of Belle Isle from an almost desolate, and 

 on your maps plainly colored, portion of inhabitable northern North 

 America. If there should be those to whom this location is as 

 yet unfamihar, let them refer to their geography, and then, follow- 

 ing the river St. Lawrence as it flows to the Gulf, and the Gulf as 

 it flows through the Straits of Belle Isle, they will readily find, just 

 before entering the narrowest part of the Straits, the coast of New- 

 foundland on the right and that of Labrador on the left of this por- 

 tion of the Gulf. 



A section, and that the most easterly, of the Canadian Province 

 of Quebec, is usuafly included with Labrador proper in the term, 

 generally apphed, of " Labrador." As a part of this Province it has 

 its mails, though irregular at best ; while its seat of government is 

 in Quebec. 



Of Labrador a certain writer has said, perhaps as truly as the 

 times (by which I mean the explorations of science and survey) 

 will pemiit, that "it is an immense peninsula extending over an 

 area of four hundred and fifty thousand superficial miles, and 

 bounded by the Atlantic, the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and Hudson's 

 Bay." 



Of this part of the coast there is a considerable division of 

 opinion, as in fact of other neighboring parts, as to the people who 

 first discovered it, as well as of the origin of the name. 



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