akes and marshes. The rivers and streams
discharging the waters of the lakes into the sea flow to the four
points of the compass--into the Atlantic and its inlets on the east,
into Ungava Bay on the north, Hudson Bay and James Bay on the west, and
the Gulf of St. Lawrence on the south. Owing to the abrupt rise of the
land from the coast these rivers and streams are very swift and are
filled with a constant succession of falls and rapids; consequently,
their navigation in canoes--the only possible way, generally speaking,
to navigate them--is most difficult and dangerous. In this, to a large
extent, lies the explanation as to why only a few daring white men have
ever penetrated to the interior plateau; the condition of the rivers,
if nothing else, makes it impossible to transport sufficient food to
sustain a party for any considerable period, and it is absolutely
necessary to run the risk of obtaining supplies from a country that may
be plentiful with game one year and destitute of it the next, and in
which the vegetation is the scantiest.

The western part of the peninsula, although it, too, contains vast
tracts in which no white man has set foot, is somewhat better known
than the eastern, most of the rivers that flow into Hudson and James
Bays having been explored and correctly mapped. Hubbard's objective
was the eastern and northern part of the peninsula, and it is with this
section that we shall hereafter deal. Such parts of this territory as
might be called settled lie in the region of Hamilton Inlet and along
the coast.

Hamilton Inlet is an arm of the Atlantic extending inland about one
hundred and fifty miles in a southwesterly direction. At its entrance,
which is two hundred miles north of Cape Charles, the inlet is some
forty miles wide. Fifty miles inland from the settlement of Indian
Harbour (which is situated on one of the White Bear Islands, near the
north coast of the inlet at its entrance), is the Rigolet Post of the
Hudson's Bay Company--the "Old Company," as its agents love to call
it--and here the inlet narrows down to a mere channel; but during the
next eighty miles of its course inland it again widens, this section of
it being known as Groswater Bay or Lake Melville.

The extreme western end of the inlet is called Goose Bay. Into this
bay flows the Grand or Hamilton River, one of the largest in Labrador.
From its source among the lakes on the interior plateau, the Grand
River first sweeps