INTRODUCTION 29 
result was that in 1825 that part of Labrador which is 
now known as the Quebee Labrador, stretching from the 
River St. John to Blane Sablon, was reannexed to Lower 
Canada. This is the arrangement which governs the 
present condition. Unfortunately, however, the boun- 
daries of Labrador have never been clearly defined. The 
jurisdiction of the governor of Newfoundland, as defined 
in the letters patent regularly issued up to 1876, includes 
“all the coast of Labrador, from the entrance of Hudson’s 
Straits to a line to be drawn due north and south from 
Anse Sablon [sic] on the said coast to the fifty-second 
degree of north latitude.’ The only conclusion which 
may be drawn from this document is that the advisers 
of the British crown, when they drew it up, were, as usual, 
not looking at the map. Anse-Sablon is a place which 
does not exist, though Blane Sablon does; and just where 
the entrance to Hudson’s Strait is, might well, as Sir John 
Haselrig said, be the subject for a month’s debate. It 
might be anywhere from Cape Chudleigh to Fort Chimo. 
The result of the ambiguity in the terms by which the 
boundary of Labrador is defined, has been a dispute be- 
tween Quebec and Newfoundland which is still pending. 
Canada has issued a map coloured red right to the Atlantic 
seaboard; and Newfoundland has retorted by colouring 
nearly the whole of the Labrador peninsula green. The 
question will probably be decided by the Judicial Com- 
mittee of the Privy Council. 
In 1811 an act of Parliament was passed authorizing 
the holding of surrogate courts in Labrador. Nothing 
was done to give effect to this act until 1827, when Sir 
Thomas Cochrane, the governor, issued a proclamation 
