ON THE LABRADOR. 63 



It brought to mind also the fact that here in the far 

 north, where the limitless barrens set no bounds to his 

 wanderings, the caribou is a most elusive animal, 

 capricious and uncertain in the line of his migrations. 

 Yet the Indians, Montagnais and Nascaupees of 

 Labrador, as well as the Eskimo tribes of the north, have 

 nothing but the herds between them and the grim shape 

 of " Bukadawin " (Famine) who sat in Hiawatha's 

 wigwam. Bands of the Indians and Eskimo pass away 

 into the barrens every year to search for the caribou ; if 

 they cut the line of migration they fare sumptuously 

 and, moreover, make provision for the winter for their 

 families. But should they fail to meet them, there is 

 often an end to their hunting, and the squaws down in 

 the timber lands watch in vain for their return. How 

 many times, one wonders, has a company of Indians 

 struggled forward, staring at the horizon, where white 

 snow meets grey sky, straining their eyes for the shapes 

 which are perhaps passing in thousands just beyond a 

 man's sight to the east or the west of them. The story 

 is told of such a party of hunters who waited and 

 watched in vain. One died and then another ; what- 

 ever weakness any individual had, it found him out, 

 until at last but two were left, and they also had turned 

 their faces to the skin wall of the fireless tent, when the 

 stronger, crawling to the door, saw a forest of horns 

 growing up against the wide sunrise as unnumbered 

 deer moved slowly out of the north-east. 



Having exhausted the hunting-grounds about the 

 inlet, we derived some fresh encouragement from a 

 statement of Sam's to the effect that one September 

 some seventeen years earlier a band of Eskimo had 

 visited a lake lying to the south-west and there had 



