l66 A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 



few miles south of Tub Island, under the following cir- 

 cumstances : A man was walking along the shore with 

 his little girl ; they separated ; she saw the beat and ran to 

 her father ; the bear also ran, and plunged into th'e water, 

 where the man shot him. I was particular to inquire as 

 to the occurrence of this animal, and from all I learned, 

 it appears to be more or less of a permanent resident on 

 the northern Labrador coast, though I at first supposed 

 that it only occasionally strayed from the arctic regions ; 

 it would seem as if its range overlapped that of the black 

 bear, the two species being found in the same localities 

 north of Belle Isle. 



We visited American Island, which is a little west of 

 Tub Island, and colonized during the summer by a man 

 named Williams ; it is of light-colored gneiss, with ex- 

 tensive broad trap dykes and irregular masses of the same 

 volcanic material. Williams was distinguished from 

 other of his countrymen by having married a full-blooded 

 Eskimo-woman. They had no children of their own, 

 but had adopted, strange to say, a mountaineer or Nas- 

 kope Indian child. The poor thing had been "burnt" 

 by frost during the past winter, and still suffered from 

 her exposure. On our way to the island we saw the fin 

 of a killer projecting four or five feet above the water; 

 moving rapidly to and fro in a school of grampus, as if 

 engaged in combat with the latter, which were recog- 

 nized by their small fins, only a foot high, which some- 

 times broke the surface of the sea. 



From Tub Island we could easily see the land twenty 

 miles distant on the north shore of Groswater Bay or 

 Hamilton Inlet, Tub Island being at the southern en- 

 trance ; it is, however, forty miles across the mouth of 



