240 A GLANCE AT THE CIVIL HISTORY OF LABRADOR. 



which they depend, is becoming scarcer every year, 

 owing largely to destructive fires which have swept over 

 vast areas, destroying forests, berry-bearing shrubs, 

 mosses and lichens, and converting whole districts into 

 hopeless deserts strewed with naked bowlders, where no 

 animal life can exist. Some of the Nasquapee tribe 

 are still heathen, but the Montagnais are nearly all nom- 

 inally Roman Catholics. The zealous Jesuit missiona- 

 ries of early times extended their labors from Canada to 

 Labrador, and these have been specially successful 

 among the Montagnais. Of late years they have been 

 resumed, and are now systematically carried on. The 

 Indians hunt over the interior, and at certain seasons 

 visit the coast in order to exchange the products of 

 the chase for clothing, ammunition, and other necessaries. 



Labrador, both politically and commercially, is the 

 great dependency of Newfoundland, more than a fourth 

 of the entire export of the fishery product of that colony 

 being taken on' the coast of Labrador. The average 

 annual catch of Newfoundland fishermen on the Labra- 

 dor coast is from 350,000 to 400,000 quintals of codfish, 

 50,000 to 70,000 barrels of herring, and from 300 to 

 500 tierces of salmon. The number of Newfound- 

 landers who frequent the Atlantic coast of Labrador 

 during the summer, from the end of June till the first or 

 second week of October, is estimated at 30,000, from 

 1,000 to 1,200 fishing vessels being employed each 

 year. 



It has been already stated that the fishermen have 

 only in recent years gone up the coast for their fares 

 beyond Hopedale. When we visited the coast in 1864 

 scarcely any fishermen went beyond Hamilton Inlet. 



