A LAND OF ETERNAL WARRING 



671 



colors of the moon shining on its weird 

 ice and deep bkie seas, the unearthly 

 loveliness of its auroras, and the mag- 

 nificent tracery of its northern cliffs. 

 Such a land is it of changes and of con- 

 trasts that those who love it at least may 

 be forgiven for thinking it the borders of 

 fairyland. 



It is indeed a fine set of people it has 

 produced, for we count as Labradorians 

 the thousands of men and women from 

 Newfoundland who every year come to 

 wrest a living from its reluctant grasp. 



I was watching one day from our 

 decks a fleet of what seemed such tiny 

 schooners to be battling with the circum- 

 stances of Labrador, as to suggest fool- 

 hardiness on the part of those who 

 handled them or indifference, except to 

 gain, on the part of those who owned 

 them. A number of boats had come 

 alongside, bringing patients or visitors 

 from most of them. Some comment 

 made as to their size was half heard by 

 a woman from one of the schooners, and 

 she turned and told me about it. 



Apparently it was ''her venture." Her 

 husband and three sons had been forced 

 to fish home, ''having no boat large 

 enough to carry them to the Larbar- 

 dore." She had stimulated them to put 

 their all into this small 20-ton vessel. 

 They had been unable to pay a crew, so 

 she not only let all her boys go, but went 

 herself, and to fill up the complement 

 persuaded her eldest boy's young wife to 

 join them also. No wonder the vessel 

 loomed up large in her eyes, for now all 

 the earnings of the "ship" would be kept 

 in the family. 



Sea love, self-reliance, and optimism 

 are the three strongest traits of charac- 

 ter developed in our people, with rathei 

 more than the ordinary amount of fatal- 

 ism. 



There is no doubt the people are 

 tough — tough as their own sharks, they 

 say, which will come to a bait made of 

 their own liver, or continue to eat after 

 being disemboweled. Anyhow, the lat- 

 ter are so unemotional, that I have gaffed 

 three with a boat-hook prodded into their 

 heads as they swam on the surface in the 



same pool, and then hauled them out to 

 freeze ignominiously on the floating ice. 



I have lain shivering in my bag on the 

 floor of a house, when the youngsters have 

 been curled up in a heap with "ne'er a 

 covering," and snoring enough to shake 

 the rafters. (A great many suffer with 

 adenoids.) I have tried to allure them 

 to drink cocoa and milk on a cold morn- 

 ing, and seen them pour it surreptitiously 

 outside the door as being "too full o' 

 sweetness," and heard a man say and 

 mean it, "you give me a lassie duff in 

 the morning and that'll last me all the 

 day." 



I have seen our postman start off in 

 winter on his fifty-mile tramp with noth- 

 ing but a piece of dry, hard bread in his 

 pocket, and this he has been doing these 

 past forty years. 



I have known a woman (with now ten 

 children) put off laying up for her con- 

 finement till she had to run from the 

 wash-tub, leaving her husband's overalls 

 unwrung, and be up and wring them 

 herself three days later. She was at the 

 time living on dry flour, and not once a 

 week getting enough of that. She had 

 no bed clothes at all, and she told me her 

 leaky house has prevented her turning 

 over in bed because her dress was frozen 

 to the wall. Herself and children are 

 now my flourishing neighbors. She 

 never had a day's real illness till ten 

 days ago, when she came into the hos- 

 pital and had her appendix removed. 



In my mind there is no dou'ot, how- 

 ever, that Labrador can maintain a good 

 population, but at present no capital has 

 been invested there except in the fishery 

 and furring. Neither of these industries 

 do practically anything to enrich the 

 country, seeing that almost every fish 

 caught and every fur killed leaves the 

 coast as it is, and is turned into money 

 elsewhere. 



Cod, salmon, and trout are exploited 

 rather than fished. Rivers have been 

 barred with nets for years. The indis- 

 criminate use of cod traps with small 

 mesh leaders destroy every year thou- 

 sands of salmon-peal seeking the rivers, 

 and, in the opinion of every one, injure 



