LABRADOR A LAND OF MYSTERY. 59 



To most readers the Labrador coast is still a Meta 

 Incognita, an Ultima Thule, a land of mystery, shfouded 

 by fog and gloom. The ordinary knowledge of it is as 

 vague and indefinite as in the times of Cabot. The 

 period when accurate charts of this intricate coast with 

 its tetis of thousands of islands, skiers, and ledges will be 

 made, seems far distant. Local pilots and fishermen 

 from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and at times from the 

 United States, with an occasional Newfoundland or 

 Canadian steamer, ply over regularly beaten routes, but 

 owing to the lack of commercial interest in these barren, 

 almost deserted shores, the coast will for years still re- 

 main well-nigh beyond the pale of modern interests and 

 thoughts. 



In time the Indian and Eskimos will be a peopledead 

 and forgotten. The Moravian settlements will be aban- 

 doned. Already, owing to the decrease in the cod fish- 

 ery, famine and want are slowly but surely reducing by 

 removal and death the numbers of the lingering white 

 population, and the coast will be still more desolate and 

 lonely than now. 



And yet this coast stands like a protecting, guardian 

 wall between the frozen north and the more temperate, 

 inhabitable regions south and west. Its unekplored bays 

 and rivers will always remain full of interest to our ad- 

 venturous yachtsmen, as well as to the naturalist, the 

 sportsman, and traveller. 



