CRUISE OF LA BELLE MARGUERITE 
priest, and in the heat of the argument, they 
exclaimed “‘may we lose every hair of our 
bodies if this vile one is appointed.”’ The priest 
had his way, and they both began to lose their 
hair. One in fright and repentance made his 
peace with the priest, and all was well. Not 
so the stubborn telegraph operator, and to 
this day he is as devoid of hair as is an apple. 
On the eastern side of the river, which we 
crossed in one of the numerous small boats left 
on its sandy shores, were a few more houses and 
a large church and a priests’ house. From the 
latter a straight path led along the top of a 
ridge, —an old raised sea beach, — bordered 
on either side with thickly growing white 
spruces. Beyond lay the beach four miles 
long, backed by shifting sand dunes, and at 
the end of the beach was the Great Natash- 
quan River with its little Indian village. 
It was on this beach that we saw a pair of 
piping plovers, with their sweet mournful 
calls, a bird that has not been recorded for 
Labrador before, and a splendid Caspian tern 
flew by so close that we could surely identify 
it. Audubon had found this bird here in 1833 
and Frazer in 1884 had discovered a breeding 
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