444 LABRADOR 



those regions may be. Note the gulls in our large har- 

 bours, and the ducks and other sea birds which are safe in 

 the middle of a city like San Francisco and feed fearlessly 

 in huge numbers in the lake at Oakland, while a mile or 

 two away, where gunners lie in wait for them, they are shy 

 and unapproachable unless deceived by decoys. 



Nowhere in the world could be found a better natural 

 reserve than Labrador. The impenetrable ice barrier 

 which shuts it in in winter has, so far at least, defied the 

 entrance of rapid transit and its vast area of over half a 

 million square miles, except for its fringe of population 

 along the seaboard, and its now roaming Indians, is still 

 practically uninhabited. 



Its vast barrens, its enormous superficial fresh-water 

 area, and its almost bare mountain sides seem to foretell 

 that, however scientific are men's methods of farming, huge 

 tracts must always in all probability be unoccupied by man. 

 Of course in these days, when faith in the unity of elements 

 is receiving currency, there is a possibility that if the ele- 

 ments are transmutable, in some way Laurentian gneisses 

 may be turned into gold, or even butter. No one can deny 

 possibilities ! But except for the likely establishment of 

 some few mines, geology seems to tell the same story as 

 regards Labrador that large areas of it will long be un- 

 profitable for man's occupation. 



As a consequence, Labrador is still practically a land of 

 pirates on Nature, or, as Hesketh Pritchard, in his delight- 

 ful book, Through Trackless Labrador, puts it, we are '"a 

 purely predatory people on a barren but luxuriant coast." 



The end can only be what might be expected when the 

 golden goose is killed those who lived off its eggs will 



