l86 A summer's cruise to northern LABRADOR. 



coast, unless their close winter houses induce chest 

 troubles : any other diseases are unknown. But what- 

 ever may have been the cause, they are rapidly melting 

 away, disappearing by entire families. They have prob- 

 ably faded away before the Nascopi Indians, who are 

 better armed, and their permanence at Hopedale and 

 northward may be due to the absence of the red Indians 

 from that part of the coast. But the Innuit or Eskimo is 

 a doomed race. Whether they are the remnants of the 

 palaeolithic race (which good authorities doubt) and for- 

 merly ranged over northern Europe during the earlier 

 stone age, and extended in America as far south as the 

 border of the great continential glaciers, and were a few 

 centuries ago driven northward by the red Indians, is a 

 problem ; but probably long before the red man entirely 

 disappears, the Eskimo will be represented by but a few 

 thousands .in the high northern regions. 



Cole was not much inclined to leave home, as the 

 salmon were just about striking in ; and, as he said,' they 

 only remained three or four days, and he might lose 

 them, since only his father, who, as we understood, also 

 had an Eskimo wife, would have to attend to the nets 

 single, or rather — as his better Eskimo half would work 

 •man-fashion with him — double-handed. 



At the mouth of the stream where they lived were 

 several huts tenanted by salmon fishers. About them 

 lounged a number of full-blooded Eskimo dogs, which 

 are quite superfluous in summer, but useful in winter, 

 when they can draw sledges at the rate of a hundred 

 miles a day should the travelling be good. 



The early morning of the 24th of July found us with 

 our pilot aboard ready to start for Strawberry Harbor ; but 



