8 VIKINGS OF TO-DAY 



" Let our trusty band 

 Haste to Fatherland ; 

 Let our vessel brave 

 Plough the angry wave ; 

 While those few who love 

 Wineland, here may rove, 

 Or, with idle toil 

 Fetid whales may boil, 

 Here on Furderstrand 

 Far from Fatherland." 



So that Vinland, in the year 1000, to which this 

 voyage had been made because " the people of Brat- 

 tahliel began to talk much about it," saying, "a 

 voyage thither ought to be particularly profitable 

 by reason of the fertility of the soil," appears to 

 have turned out no better than we found Labrador 

 in 1891. The famous log-books of George Cart- 

 wright, 1 written about 1790, give a more reliable 

 account of the country, and he appears at first to 

 have found it profitable to make voyages thither. 

 The animals, and not the vegetables, engaged his 

 attention, and he would have made a remunerative 

 business of it had not first pirates and then priva- 

 teers despoiled him of his ships, and outfits, and 

 wares. 



In Labrador now, work as he may, one man 

 cannot keep the wolf from the door the Eskimo 

 and natives of the coast, the mountaineer and 

 hunter Indians of the interior, and the white settlers, 

 are alike often face to face with starvation. The 



1 Journals of George Cartwright. 



