THE THIRD ANGLO-FRENCH DUEL 145 



hunting, and trading purposes, and whales, seals, otters, bears, 

 beavers, salmon, and cod were caught or bought by barter 

 from the natives. Meanwhile, other transitory fishermen used 

 to come from Conception Bay during the summer and fish 

 off the coasts of Quirpon, Griguet, and St. Anthony in the 

 north-easternmost parts of Newfoundland during the second 

 Anglo-French war, and now that the war was over and the 

 north side of the Strait was occupied, they too, like the Poole- 

 men, transferred their energies to Labrador. 



Except for the natives, the experiences both of residents and rela- 

 and visitors in Labrador were replicas of former experiences ^^^.^ //jf^'^ 

 in Newfoundland. There had been hardly any barter between Eskimos. 

 white men and Beothics, and in Labrador the ways of the 

 English traders were partly smoothed by Frenchmen, who 

 had been in those parts since Cartier's time, had foregathered 

 at or near Bradore Bay in the seventeenth century, had had 

 some sort of fort there in the eighteenth century, and had 

 made friends with the Mountaineer Indians. In making 

 friends with the Indians, they made foes of the Eskimos, who 

 in the times of Le Clercq and La Hontan still frequented the 

 north coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, as far west as the 

 Islands of Mingan, opposite Anticosti.^ The Indians of 

 Labrador dwelt inland, but used to visit French ships, from 

 which they received guns and ammunition in exchange for 

 furs and skins. There had been hereditary war between the 

 Indians and Eskimos from time immemorial, and fire-arms 

 turned the scale in favour of the Indians, who gradually ex- 

 tirpated the Eskimos of the Gulf. While this war was in 

 progress, the Eskimos frequently crossed Belle Isle Strait and 

 attacked the Breton fishermen in the peninsula of Petit Nord,^ 

 and on one occasion slew some straggling Frenchmen in the 

 neighbourhood of Petit Maitre (Croc), clothed themselves in 

 the clothing of the slain, and thus secured twenty-one more 



1 Chretien Le Clercq, Nouvelle Relation de la Gaspesie, 1691, 

 PP" 453> 461 ; La Hontan, op. cit., pp. 309, 334 ; compare F. D. 

 Cartwright, Life of Major Cartwright, vol. ii, p. 316. 



VOL, V. PT. IV T. 



