122 CANADIAN ENVIRONMENT OF THE OUANANICHE 



nita as when it was, in popular belief, the home of 

 dwarfs, of giants, of headless rulers, and semi-human 

 monsters. Coextensive with this great peninsula is 

 the Canadian home of the ouananiche. Reaching 

 from Hudson Strait on the north to the St. Lawrence 

 on the south, and from Hudson Bay and the eastern 

 boundary of Ontario on the west to the Gulf of St. 

 Lawrence, the Strait of Belle-Isle, and the Atlantic 

 on the west, it is the land par excellence of the salmon 

 and the trout as well as of the ouananiche, and the 

 home of the Eskimo and Montagnais. This vast ter- 

 ritory is fully a thousand miles in width from east to 

 west, and extends from north to south for a distance 

 of over 1200 miles. Its area is estimated at over 

 500,000 square miles, or nearly equal to that of the 

 British Islands, France, and Germany combined. 



The coast of Labrador is supposed to have been 

 visited by Basque traders * before the days of Colum- 

 bus, and by the Northmen about the ninth century, f 

 and its name appears to be of Portuguese origin. J 



* Justin Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, 

 vol. i., p. 74. 



f Chambers' Encylopcedia. See "Labrador." 



t The various derivations of the name noted in Justin Winsor's 

 History, vol. i., pp. 31, 74, appear, as the editor remarks in one case, 

 to have nothing but phonetic resemblance to recommend them. 

 But that it was so called from the Portuguese terra labarador 

 (cultivable land) is not improbable, when we are told by no less 

 an authority than Mr. Winsor himself that Eric the Red gave 

 Greenland its sunny name "to propitiate intending settlers." More- 

 over, there are not wanting those who practically acquit of dishon- 

 esty the explorers that gave Greenland and Labrador the names they 

 now bear. Physical cataclysms and the closing in of ice-packs are 

 held responsible by Montgomery, in his poem on Greenland, and by 



