A LABRADOR SPRING 
at the succeeding date, and feast-days and 
Sundays are pretty well observed.” + 
The day was a dark and lowering one — this 
31st of May; low-lying clouds scudded across 
the sky, the sand-dunes were gray and for- 
bidding, the river, over a mile wide here at the 
mouth, the colour of lead. Loons were driving 
north before the chilling blasts, in a continuous 
stream, two or three every few minutes, and a 
migrating band of tree swallows, with promise 
of summer, flew joyously about the great river, 
while on the bleak shore a picturesque scene 
was being enacted by the Indians, the bright 
colours of whose costumes relieved the sombre 
grayness of river and sky and shore. 
They were all intent on their purpose, these 
savages of the Natashquan, and paid scant 
attention to us, as they hastened down over 
the sands to the shore of the river, carrying their 
packs and pots and babies, — men, women and 
children, dogs and even cats, all higgledy- 
piggledy, and all in a great hurry to be off. 
There were perhaps eight or ten families in all, 
—men in the prime of life, with erect, wiry 
* Labrador, by Wilfred T. Grenfell and others, New 
York, 1909, pp. 224, 225. 
162 
