TRAVELLED ROUTES TO LABRADOR 41 



sive, is to hire a schooner or a small steamer, and thus 

 be entirely one's own master. Few yachts have ever 

 visited Labrador. The descriptions given of the welcome 

 afforded by its coast to small vessels, even in such should-be 

 authorities as the Encyclopaedia Britannica, are so poetical 

 in their freedom with the actual facts, that they are not 

 calculated to entice any one who is bent on pleasure. As 

 a matter of fact, if the charting were better, there could 

 scarcely be a safer coast for the amateur skipper, for one 

 can get a harbour in every stretch of ten miles along the 

 whole length of the Atlantic coast. It is not necessary to 

 spend a single night at sea the whole way from the Belle 

 Isle Strait to Cape Chidley. Flitting from harbour to 

 harbour, one can easily cover the entire coast. 1 



The days are long in summer in these latitudes, and at 

 night the clear atmosphere, the splendid northern lights, 

 and the absence of strong tidal currents (except in the 

 extreme north), make navigation still more easy. I have 

 cruised the coast both in sailing boat and steamer, year 

 after year, and have never been near losing a life yet. 

 Three parties of friends, who have adopted this method of 

 visiting Labrador in a hired schooner (one party having 

 come two summers in succession), all give the same testi- 

 mony. 2 The fishermen who visit this coast year after year 

 can give similar evidence ; thousands of men, women, and 

 children have for many years been cruising the outside coast 



1 With one man in an open dingey I have, with comparative com- 

 fort, traversed the coast from Battle Harbour to Rigolet, a distance 

 of two hundred miles. 



2 The gentlemen referred to are Americans from Boston, Mass., 

 Concord, N.H., and Providence, R.I., respectively. 



