THE .PEOPLE OF TUE COAST 175 
The best educated people in the country at present are 
the Eskimo. Almost without exception they can read 
and write. Many can play musical instruments, share 
in part singing, and are well able to keep accounts, and 
know the value of things. These accomplishments, entirely 
and solely due to the Moravian missionaries, have largely 
helped them to hold their own in trade, a faculty for want 
of which almost every aboriginal race is apt to suffer so 
severely. 
I have known an Eskimo called in to read and to write 
a letter for a Newfoundland fisherman, and I have had 
more than once to ask one to help me by playing our own 
harmonium for us at a service, because not one of a large 
audience could do so. I have heard more than one Eskimo 
stand up and deliver an excellent impromptu speech. Read- 
ing the Newfoundland Blue Books, reporting the numbers 
able to read and write in Labrador, I acquired an entirely 
erroneous estimate of the people’s accomplishments in 
those directions. Our white population is still very largely 
illiterate. Some headway has, however, been made of 
late years, and literature and loan libraries distributed 
through the Labrador Mission are now accessible all along 
the coast, and are creating a love of reading. 
There are practically no alcoholic liquors sold in Labra- 
dor. Not a licensed house exists. If liquor is sold at 
all, it is in very small quantities and clandestinely in what 
we know as “shebeens.” To obtain convictions for 
breaches of the really very stringent liquor laws is not 
easy. In ten years’ cruising the coast, I have only been 
able to convict five ‘‘shebeeners,”’ and I will candidly admit 
that I lose no opportunities. 
