666 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Now the water pail they send; 

 To the fountain I must bend, 

 Nor from out this land divine 

 Have I quaffed one drop of wine. 



and later, 



Let our trusty band 

 Haste to Fatherland, 

 Let our vessel brave 

 Plough the angry wave, 

 While those few who love 

 Wineland here may rove 

 Or, with idle toil 

 Fetid whales may boil. 



Many years of Labrador life have left 

 in my mind at least one indelible im- 

 pression. It was created the first day I 

 set eyes on its rocky coast. It was under 

 a cold, sullen sky, from the icy bosom of 

 the polar current that swathes it, as we 

 caught a glimpse of a low, naked line of 

 headlands and small, barren islands, 

 over some of which the heavy Atlantic 

 swell was making every now and again 

 a clean breach, while here and there 

 great ominous "sea horses" raised their 

 gigantic heads, as they charged furiously 

 over uncharted reefs, which themselves 

 neither gave quarter to nor expected it 

 from anything. 



Truly, it is a land of eternal warring. 

 Everywhere along its coast-line great 

 seas ceaselessly pound as with the ham- 

 mer of Thor into its adamantine sides. 

 The almost resistless arctic ice-flow 

 growls and groans as it crushes, cleaves, 

 and smashes the very face of nature, 

 while the monster bergs outside, like 

 ominous ice giants, roar and crash as 

 they vainly battle with their still more 

 resistless enemy, the summer sun. 



Where in the more sheltered spots 

 gentler nature strives to spread a cover- 

 ing over the nakedness of the land, abys- 

 mal cold wages battles with the tena- 

 cious plants and scrubs, which grow 

 gnarled and knotty in the conflict. The 

 few animals that in any number can 

 survive in its wilds, are especially en- 

 dowed to resist its apparently never dis- 

 couraged efforts to destroy the very 

 source of life. 



Cradled in its rocky fastnesses, resist- 

 less storms sweep madly its already al- 

 most denuded bed rocks with a generous 



abandonment, as if the chance of effect- 

 ing destruction justified any outlay of 

 energy imaginable. It is a land well 

 suited for the location of the traditional 

 wicked man, as little likely to afford him 

 any dangerous liability to peace. 



As one approaches it from the Atlantic 

 and passes its high portals, the cliffs of 

 Belle Isle, the traveler spies a stout log 

 house perched high up on a barren ledge 

 clinging to the very face of the cliff. 

 Suggestive sight: it contains cached the 

 necessities of life against the inevitable 

 day when some poor voyagers shall find 

 themselves suddenly dependent on its 

 savage clemency. Meanwhile, the 

 thoughts of those who know fly to the 

 poor creatures from the ''Dainty Lady," 

 the liner Scotsman, which, laden with 

 Christmas cheer, late one fall received 

 the hospitality of its eastern ledges, and 

 now lies a scrap heap in her deep-water 

 graves close by. One sees, meanwhile, 

 visions of women dying in their tracks 

 as they painfully struggle toward the 

 western end for shelter. Sometimes one 

 seems in its storms almost to hear their 

 screams of joy over just such victories. 



Viewed, as those who frequent it 

 mostly view it, from the sea, one would 

 think its sole harvest was the countless 

 ice-borne erratics that crowd every hill- 

 side and crown every sky-line, just where 

 other countries would be flaunting flow- 

 ers, fruits, and trees. 



Still there remains in my memory, 

 after all this lapse of years, the intense 

 curiosity I then felt to learn what kind 

 of human beings such an environment 

 had evolved. Since then I have learned 

 that in the realms of human life also the 

 same stern conditions maintain. Life is 

 truly a battle in Labrador, and its condi- 

 tions are responsible for a white race as 

 remarkable for their adaptability to live 

 under the very hardest of physical con- 

 ditions as the native Eskimo they are 

 steadily replacing. These little arctic 

 natives can withstand anything except 

 civilized man. 



But Labrador, beyond being a place of 

 war, is a land of contrasts — a land where 

 extremes meet — and where no man dieth 



