LABRADOR 
CHAPTER I 
HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION ! 
By W. S. WALLACE 
LABRADOR has not much history. So far as we know, it 
was first seen by European eyes in 986. From that time 
until about 1700 it almost enjoyed the happiness of the 
country which has no history. There is nothing to record 
but the voyages of navigators who came and saw the land, 
and sailed away. Labrador, said Jacques Cartier, was 
“the land God gave to Cain”; there was “not one cart- 
load of earth on the whole of it.” No one came to live 
on the coast until about 1700. But if the history of Lab- 
rador is deficient in quantity, it is marked by an infinite 
variety. Across the stage there pass in succession the 
savage bands of the Eskimos, an earlier race than ours; 
the storm-driven “dragons” of the Vikings; the early 
navigators, Venetian, Portuguese, English; whalers and 
fishermen from the Basque Provinces, from France, from 
the west of England; French-Canadian seigneurs and 
concessionaires along the Céte du Nord; English settlers 
after 1763 above the Strait of Belle Isle (among them 
tT wish to express my indebtedness to Mr. W. L. Grant, Beit Lec- 
turer in Colonial History in the University of Oxford, and Mr. H. P. 
Biggar, representative in Europe of the Dominion Archives, for assist- 
ance kindly rendered in the preparation of this chapter.— W.S. W. 
B 1 
