

72 MERCHANDISE, 



The room is a small one, and the various articles are piled in heaps in 

 corners, and about the sides and middle of the room, for want of 

 space. This is the regular trading port for the region around. If 

 any article of commerce is wanted it is obtained here if anywhere 

 on the coast : a barrel of flour or salt pork ; a box or bag of bis- 

 cuit as they are called, or more properly hardtack or hard crack- 

 ers, — and as a rule they merit their name since the majority of 

 them require long soaking in water before they are soft enough for 

 use, to be fried, broiled, or eaten at all, and I have often seen 

 them so tough that the repeated blows of a hatchet-back would 

 barely suffice to break them ; meal, of which varieties that com- 

 monly called oatmeal, is much used, while Indian meal is regarded 

 by the majority as only fit to give the dogs, to whom it is fed scalded, 

 though the poorer class are frequently obliged to mix it with their 

 flour if not use it altogether pure ; butter, salted down in tubs or 

 firkins, and lard, both of an inferior quality ; sugar and molasses, 

 the latter of which is the chief source of the sweetenings used on 

 the coast. A strange custom prevailing here is that of sw^eetening, 

 with molasses the tea or coffee, though very little of the latter is 

 ever used so far northeast, tea being a popular and more healthy 

 drink, and the true, native Labradorians invariably take the mo- 

 lasses pot, even where the sugar is equally as easy of access, and 

 use its contents where we should use the sugar. Besides provisions, 

 nails, hatchets, axes, and tools of various descriptions — usually con- 

 fined to planes, saws, chisels, and screw-drivers — are always on 

 hand ; large cross-cut saws can be purchased of the traders, as can 

 other articles wanted if known and ordered beforehand. A few 

 yards of any of the cheap patterns of dress wear, trimmings, gloves, 

 stockings, underwear, coarse materials for overalls, and in fact a little 

 of anything that long experience has shown to be in constant use, 

 will usually be found somewhere in the promiscuous heap of ma- 

 terials stored in this room ; while it would consume a chapter in 

 itself to enumerate the variety of articles here accumulated. It 

 is a great day when several of the inhabitants living say ten or fif- 

 teen miles up or down the coast come to the store to purchase 



