200 LABRADOR 
much weight of snow, the water comes over the ice in places 
near shore, and does not freeze when blanketed with ten 
or twelve inches of light snow. Such water can be cleared 
of slush by very little warming over the fire. In default 
of water, chopped ice melts much better than snow, which 
the people avoid. They prefer to work hard for twenty 
or thirty minutes chopping a hole, rather than bother to 
melt down an uncompacting mass of cold, porous snow. 
They rarely, if ever, drink ice-cold water, but warm it a few 
degrees, even building a special fire for this purpose when 
travelling. In this, as in most other race peculiarities, 
they find their opposite in their Eskimo neighbours, who are 
said to eat snow and swallow frozen food with only the 
happiest consequences. 
For winter travel, most of the people now use sheet-iron 
stoves a foot square and about two feet long. The snow 
is tramped level with the snow-shoes, the tent raised and 
boughs laid; then the stove is placed on four stakes which 
are driven some three feet into the snow, and serve as legs. 
Such a stove will burn almost any small wood, and in a 
country where good wood is scarce, will save much time and 
labour in heavy chopping and shovelling snow, besides 
enabling the traveller to camp almost anywhere and not 
have to go more than a mile or two out of his course to 
get good wood. 
The Indians at Nichicun are classed by Low as Western 
Nascaupees. Only thirteen families traded at the post 
at the time of his visit. Other families in the neighbourhood 
go to the Gulf with their furs. Living near the geographical 
centre and apex of the plateau, they naturally hunt not 
far from Nichicun (“‘Otter-place”’) Lake. They live almost 
