ON THE LABRADOR. 65 



summer quarters at the end of the bay, so after a most 

 grateful cup of tea we once more manned our trap-boat 

 and pursued our way between the indrawing shores. Rather 

 more than a couple of hours brought us within sight of our 

 destination and of two men in green flat-bottomed boats, 

 who were seal-hunting at the mouth of a river. These 

 proved to be Broomfield and his son, and they rowed out 

 to meet us, so that very soon we were all on shore collected 

 round a fire. The same evening our crew departed, as the 

 wind had shifted to a quarter which promised a clear run 

 down the estuary, and Jack and I were left with the trappers. 



That night, as we smoked our pipes in the glow of the 

 camp fire, we gained at last some first-hand information 

 about the caribou. 



For the previous seven or eight years one of the main 

 herds (so far as I know, it is generally believed there are 

 three in the peninsula of Labrador) had put in an appear- 

 ance in the vicinity of Sam Broomfield' s house between the 

 5th and igth of November. Only the year before the old 

 trapper and his son had shot thirty animals, and Mrs. 

 Broomfield had watched a part of the migration from her 

 back window. These facts, though exceeding!^ interesting, 

 came in the nature of a blow to my hopes, for it was per- 

 fectly obvious that, as I had to join the steamer at Fanny's 

 Harbour on the i6th of October, the caribou would still be 

 some hundreds of miles away when I must perforce bid 

 farewell to Jack Lane's Bay. 



Though bereft of any chance of seeing " lafoule" as the 

 French Canadians of Hudson's Bay call the great migra- 

 tion of the caribou, Sam considered it quite possible that 

 we might, to use his own words, " come up with some stag 

 that's got left behind," and with a view to doing this we 

 traversed the woods and barrens round the end of the inlet 

 for the next few days. Our efforts proved entirely fruitless, 

 for we saw neither track nor sign of any animal whatever 



3 



