230 LABRADOR 
to show them to the curious at the exhibitions at Chicago, 
Buffalo, and elsewhere. Few returned, and they richer 
only in those heirlooms of civilization, the germs of specific 
diseases, which most efficiently put a stop to the growth 
of the community, and left a diseased and miserable people 
to be a constant danger to every ‘‘Innuit”’ on the coast. 
Another forty miles to the south is Okkak, the largest 
station, with some three hundred and fifty souls. It is 
within the northern limit of trees, and consequently houses, 
boats, and firing are more easily acquired. A large number 
of permanent wooden houses have been erected. At cer- 
tain seasons of the year considerable social life is possible. 
The annual census shows that during the fifty years pre- 
vious to 1902 the congregation was steadily growing in 
numbers. Some small-arts and crafts were established and 
quite a trade done in ivory carvings, in modern skin dolls, 
tubiks or tents, kayaks, etc., and in wooden models of na- 
tive houses, komatiks, and such like. Sickness imported 
by families returning from the exhibitions, overcrowding 
and lack of sanitation with its inevitable shadow, con- 
sumption, epidemics arising from the increasing contact 
with the white fishermen who fish in hundreds on what 
once the Eskimo considered ‘‘their grounds,” have shorn 
the settlement of much of its original strength. 
The Brethren here now have a little hospital besides their 
educational and religious work. At first the “Innuits” 
would not subject themselves to the necessary hospital 
regulations. We carried thither the first patients in our 
little hospital steamer. A severe epidemic of grippe (with 
heart troubles and other complications) was killing many. 
We had picked up a full load, and dumped them on the new 
