168 LABRADOR 
about, looking everywhere for ‘good tucks”’ of fish, and 
often so anxious to get the fish quickly that they leave the 
very places that later turn out to be best, only to find no 
others and so go home empty or “clean.” 
These wandering schooners are called ‘green fish”’ 
catchers, and when they have taken their “‘fare,’’ or when 
their time is ‘“‘runned up,” they come south, pick up the 
freighters they left, and carry them to their homes. Of 
late, however, more ‘‘make,”’ or dry, their fish at the har- 
bour, where their freighters are doing the same thing. 
Though curing seems an easy matter, it involves much work 
and infinite patience. At home the gardens left in the 
spring sorely need tending now, and every man is anxious 
to be getting ready for the winter. Yet often for a week 
at a time, wet and cold days prevent any work being done. 
So valuable are fine days that a certain medicine was ad- 
vertised along the coast as a guarantee to “cure all’ and 
to ‘give eight fine fish days” to any one buying five dollars’ 
worth. 
The actual number of the vessels visiting Labrador I am 
unable to obtain, — probably one thousand each year. 
Every year quite a number go down that neither “clear” 
nor “register” at the customs-houses. About twenty thou- 
sand persons, all told, constitute the summer exodus from 
Newfoundland. 
One or two steamers have been used in the Labrador cod- 
fishery of recent years, but the people are strongly preju- 
diced against their introduction. They have seen the 
steamers supplant the schooners entirely for catching seals. 
They have seen any chance of large returns pass entirely 
out of reach of the small fisherman. Moreover, they be- 
