INTRODUCTION 31 
dred and fifty settlers. In 1848 the bishop of Newfound- 
land visited Labrador. ‘No bishop or clergyman of our 
Church,” he said, ‘‘has ever been along this coast before, 
and yet the inhabitants are almost all professed members 
of our Church and of English descent.” The good man 
found plenty of work to do. He consecrated several 
eraveyards. At one settlement ‘great numbers were 
married, and both here and elsewhere an offering [of four 
dollars] was very cheerfully paid.” At Battle Harbour 
fifty-seven children were admitted into the Church. 
The statement is made in some of the books that when 
the Acadians were driven from their homes in 1753, a 
number of them took refuge on the Labrador coast, and 
erected a fort at Chateau Bay. For this statement there 
is no authority whatever. The only invasion of the shores 
of Labrador by Acadians took place in the years 1857-1861. 
During these years a number of Acadians came from the 
Magdalen Islands, whither their ancestors had fled a cen- 
tury before. Some of them, braving the threats of seig- 
neurs, settled at Pointe Saint-Paul, not far from the ancient 
harbour of “ Brest,” and others squatted near Natishquan, 
ninety miles east of Mingan. In all, they numbered 
about eighty families. Their children still live on the 
Céte du Nord, scarcely distinguishable from the French 
Canadians about them. 
Something must be said about the Hudson’s Bay Com- 
pany. It is probable that until 1870 the Hudson’s Bay 
Company was at law the proprietor of a large part of the 
Labrador peninsula. Under their charter they claimed 
