16 _ LABRADOR 
guese; but Brest is the ‘principal town” of the Sieur de 
Combes. The finishing touches were put on the myth 
by a Mr. Samuel Robertson, who lived on the Labrador 
coast in the first half of the nineteenth century. In a 
paper read before the Geographical and Historical Society 
of Quebec in 1843, he gave a graphic picture of Brest in 
its palmy days. ‘I estimate,” he said, ‘‘that at one time 
it contained two hundred houses, besides stores, etc., and 
perhaps 1000 inhabitants in the winter, which would be 
trebled during the summer. Brest was at the height of 
its prosperity about the year 1600, and about thirty years 
later the whole tribe of the Eskimos were totally extir- 
pated or expelled from that region. After this the town 
began to decay, and towards the close of the century the 
name was changed to Bradore.’ In 1630, he goes on to 
relate, a grant en seigneurie of four leagues of the coast 
embracing the town was made to the Count de Courte- 
manche, who was married to a daughter of King Henry IV 
of France. 
Et voili justement comme on écrit Vhistoire. The whole 
story is a myth and a fairy tale. There was, it is true, a 
De Courtemanche on the Labrador coast from 1704-1716, 
but he was not a count, nor did he hold any land en sevg- 
neurie, and he was married to the daughter of a tanner 
named Charest at Lévis. Moreover, we have De Courte- 
manche’s account of the coast when he came there in 1704. 
He does not mention the town of Brest; apparently he 
had never heard of it. But in the harbour he found an 
establishment of Frenchmen and a blockhouse, about half 
a league from the mouth of the Eskimo River. This 
was just a century after the time when “Brest was at 
