AND KAYAK 47 



she made from them were either too big or 

 too small, and desperately ugly. I always got 

 a proper fit when I let the women do their 

 work in their own way, and Juliana explained 

 it easily enough. " Some women," she said, 

 " take up more in the sewing than others, 

 and they are not used to patterns. Now I will 

 make you some good boots." And without 

 pattern or measure, or anything else beyond 

 her bare word, away she trotted, and in a 

 few days she brought me the best pair of 

 boots I ever had. 



So I got my clothes and my boots. 



With the freezing of the sea there began 

 the real Labrador cold ; not the bleak, biting 

 cold of autumn, when the wind blows from 

 the east over the freezing sea, but the grim 

 cold of winter. Oddly enough, it does not 

 feel so very cold ; it is a dry air, coming from 

 the trackless desert of the interior of Labrador, 

 bracing and keen, and lacking some of the 

 sting of the sea wind ; but night by night my 

 minimum therometer sank lower, until, to- 

 wards the end of January, it could go no 

 further, and the indicator used to stick each 

 night at minus forty. It is the little things 

 one does not think of that show best the power 

 of the winter cold. 



On those cold mornings the bread was often 



