ertainly are the curse of Labrador, and until ice makes in the
fall they effectually prevent all travel into the interior. Even the
Indians have to come to the coast in summer to escape them, while the
whites who visit this country for the fishing make their settlements on
the barest and most wind-swept places. The few who live here the year
round have summer homes on the coast, but build their winter houses
inland, at the heads of bays or the mouths of rivers, where there is
timber to afford some protection from the cold. Those are winter
houses back there."

"I wondered why they were abandoned," said Cabot, "but I don't any
longer."

"By the way," suggested White, "you forgot to try the trout fishing.
Shall we go back?"

"I wouldn't go fishing on that stream if every trout in it was of solid
gold and I could scoop them out with my hands," asserted Cabot. "In
fact, I don't know of anything short of starvation, or dying of thirst,
that would take me back there."

After supper our lads went ashore at the island settlement, and were
hospitably received by the dwellers in its half-dozen stoutly built,
earthen-roofed houses. These were constructed of logs, set on end like
palisades, and while they were scantily furnished, they were warm and
comfortable. In them Cabot, who was regarded with great curiosity on
account of having come from the far foreign city of New York, asked
many questions, and acquired much information concerning the strange
country to which Fate had brought him. Thus he learned that Labrador
is a province of Newfoundland, and that while its prolific fisheries
attract some 20,000 people to its bleak shores every summer, its entire
resident white population hardly exceeds one thousand souls. He was
told that from June to October news of the outside world is received by
steamer from St. Johns every two or three weeks, but that during the
other eight months of the year only three mails reach the country,
coming by dog sledge from far-away Quebec.

While Cabot was gathering these and many other interesting bits of
information, White was becoming confirmed in his belief that to make a
successful trading trip he must carry his goods far to the northward.

So at daybreak of the following morning the "Sea Bee" was once more got
under way, and ran up the rock-bound coast past Chateau Bay, with its
superb Castle Rock, to Battle Harbour, the metropolis of Labrador,
which place was reached late the same