HOW THEY ARE CARRIED. 229 



Bersimis to Bonne Esperance, a distance of about seven hundred 

 miles, the mail is taken by the carrier who tramps the distance gen- 

 erally with snowshoes or rackets at the rate of from fifteen to thirty 

 miles a day, as I have said ; hence, though the mail generally starts 

 from Quebec on the first or second of February, it seldom reaches 

 its terminus before the last of March or the first of April. A long 

 time to wait for one's letters, you will say ; and indeed it is, but you 

 hardly mind it when your news from home does come, especially 

 if it be good news. 



After reaching Bonne Esperance, a special carrier is sent on to 

 Blanc Sablon, eighteen miles farther down the coast, with the 

 remainder of the mail. The peninsula of Labrador proper beyond 

 receives no mail until the lighthouse steamer, a small vessel which 

 is sent yearly by the Canadian government at Quebec to supply the 

 lighthouses along the coast with provisions, oil for the lights, and 

 coal, brings a second mail, in the early spring, as soon generally as 

 open water will allow passage. In the summer, the mail comes and 

 goes, several times in the course of the season, by the traders who 

 bring it from and return it to Quebec ; while another also arrives 

 from Natashquan, via packet from Gaspe on the south shore, twice 

 a month which is taken up by some authorized trading vessel — 

 most every trader stops at this port — and carried onward; and 

 still another mail comes from the States via Newfoundland, by a 

 mail steamer, employed at one of the fishing stations, that makes 

 bi-weekly trips from St. John's to one or two localities on this part 

 of the coast. In this way the people on the coast of Labrador re- 

 ceive and send their yearly mails. A cable runs from Anticosti to 

 Quebec, by way of the south shore and it is soon hoped that one 

 will be laid from that island to Mingan, at least, the post of the 

 Hudson's Bay Company before alluded to, if not farther down the 

 coast, — but there is yet much to hope for on this score. 



The weather now began to be fine, and the warm sun to melt 

 away the snow, and turn to green the brown winter-killed leaves of 

 the plants already brought to light, in the damp mosses on the hill 

 tops and occasionally on the plains. The birds were becoming 



