186 LABRADOR 
In the nearer regions, service at guiding and with survey- 
ing or exploring parties as voyageurs is resorted to con- 
siderably by men of more or less Indian blood, but the dark 
Indian accepts such employment rather reluctantly. His 
light bodily frame, in fact, is not well suited to heavy 
work. The voyageurs of the north par excellence are Scotch 
or French mixed breeds, men not infrequently of unusual 
bone and strength. Although Dr. Low regards the modern 
Montagnais as rather improved in sturdiness by the long 
infiltration of white blood which began with the days of 
the Coureurs des Bois and early fur trade, the slighter 
build usual in the northern group is tolerably common. 
Occasional association with modern operations along 
the nearer borders has not much changed the inland life 
of the people. The interior is still an Indian possession, 
where no white man makes his home, and the only law is 
the immemorial code of lodge and hunting-ground. The 
whole inland, and indeed almost all the coasts, remains 
given over to the hunting life. 
The Indians, always diminishing in numbers, may be 
reckoned at some three or four thousand at the present 
time. Of these the Montagnais, who are all tributary to 
Gulf or Saguenay trading-stations, make up more than half. 
It is difficult to arrive at a census of such a wandering 
people, for in one year and another some of them appear 
successively upon coasts remotely apart. The lists of 
names at such far-distant trading-stations are rarely com- 
pared with each other, while the names of the Indians are 
somewhat subject to change, and at best are not always 
easy to identify. 
About the great lakes of the central area the people 
