OUR GUIDE 



sledge with its active little driver, and to hear that 

 cheery voice say " Aksuse." Johannes ! 



What was he doing ? " Oh," said Johannes, " I 

 heard you were going to Hebron, so I thought I 

 would come with you. I hear they have plenty of 

 walruses at Hebron, and I want some walrus skin 

 for new drags for my sledge. I think they will sell 

 me some." What a day to choose to go shopping ! 

 I wonder if there was more at the back of that little 

 man's mind. He joined our little conference, and 

 listened with nods to all that our drivers had to say. 

 They were for turning back. " There is no road," 

 they said, "the ice is all broken there around the 

 headland across the bay. Let us turn homewards." 

 " A-a-a-tsuk," said Johannes. " 1 know a track 

 over the headland ; let me see if we can get to it." 

 He walked along the ice at the foot of the rocks, 

 now standing for a moment, now running a few steps, 

 now clinging to the stones, and we watched him in 

 silence. I admired that little Eskimo ; to my mind 

 he seemed the very personification of dogged pluck ; 

 and as I stood shivering out there on the ice at the 

 foot of the cliffs of lonely Labrador, and watching 

 the tiny fur-clad figure as it moved steadily on to 

 where the big headland of Uivak loomed black and 

 stately, I said to myself. " There is a man ; well may 

 he call himself one of the People." He came back 

 presently, and said " We can do it " and we did it J 



I think that of all my memories of life in Labrador 

 the most vivid is the memory of that race along the 

 fringe of ice at the foot of the cliffs. On the left 

 the wall of rock rose steep ; on the right the black 

 water churned and tumbled and ground the floating 



pans of ice together: beneath us the thick sea-ice 



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