304 LABRADOR 
“all rights to trade and commerce of those seas, etc., 
within the entrance of Hudson’s Strait, and all lands on 
the coasts and confines thereof.” Their claim to Labrador 
was submitted to the law officers of the British crown in 
1752, and pronounced by them to be valid. It was not, 
however, till 1831 that the company began to exploit 
Labrador. In that year, having learned from a missionary 
report that the country about Ungava produced excellent 
furs, and being desirous also of ‘‘ameliorating the condi- 
tion of the natives,” they founded Fort Chimo on Hudson’s 
Strait. A year or so later they established at the other 
end of Labrador Rigolet Post, near the head of Hamilton 
Inlet. It was the desire to establish communications 
between these two posts that led to the wonderful over- 
land journey of John M’Lean, the factor at Fort Chimo, 
in 1838, a journey which has not been repeated until within 
the last few years. M’Lean’s Notes of a Twenty-five Y ears’ 
Service in the Hudson’s Bay Territories is worth reading 
‘as an earlier version of the lure of the Labrador wild. 
In 1870 the great company surrendered all its rights in 
British North America to the Dominion of Canada, in return 
for a substantial quid pro quo. All that part of Labrador, 
therefore, which does not belong to Newfoundland, comes 
under the jurisdiction of the Dominion. 
There remains to be told the story of the Moravian 
missionaries. No more wonderful story of missionary 
effort has ever awaited the pen of the reporter; and yet 
the work of the Moravian Mission in Labrador has been 
little known. It was in 1752 that the United Society of 
Brethren first attempted to found a mission there among 
