PREFACE. 



The Labrador Peninsula is less known than the interior of 

 Africa or the wastes of Siberia. Its rivers are still stocked 

 with salmon ; its inland waters are the breeding places of count- 

 less birds. Its numerous and deep fiords, and the splendid 

 mountain scenery of the northern coast, with its Arctic ice- 

 fields and thousand bergs, and the Eskimos, christianized and 

 heathen, will never cease to tempt to this threshold of the Arc- 

 tic regions the hardy explorer or the adventurous yachtsman. 



Though this book is mainly based on observations and col- 

 lections made by the author in his early student days, it was 

 thought that some general and standard account of the Labra- 

 dor coast, its geography, its people, its fisheries, its geology, as 

 well as its animals and plants, might be useful, even if future 

 explorations of the great fiords and of the interior plateaux 

 and rivers might in time result in far more complete works. 



The scientific results, geological and zoological, are reprinted 

 from the Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History 

 for 1867. Chapters I, II, III, and VI are reprinted by per- 

 mission from the Bulletin of the American Geographical 

 Society for 1888. Chapters IV and XIII first appeared in the 

 American Naturalist, and Chapter V is reprinted from Apple- 

 tons" Journal. 



Sportsmen and ornithologists will be interested in the list 

 of Labrador birds by Mr. L. W. Turner, which has been kind- 



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