feet in height, which is strewn with almost
uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and
west. On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from
3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea. The whole of this vast
Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the
River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson's Bay and
Hudson's Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much
population.

"The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have
blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer
from the rigours of a Labrador winter. In the summer the frequent fogs
render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields
of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any
alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary" (James M'Kenzie).
Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America
are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits--a great
branch of the Atlantic--named after Davis and Baffin, who first
explored them. Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to
beyond 60 deg. N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson's Straits, which, if
followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would
lead him into the great expanse of Hudson's Bay, one of the most
important features in the geography of North America.

HUDSON'S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about
315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James
Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from
Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River
Saguenay on the south. The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence
River. It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began
to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of
salt water--Hudson's Bay. But the people who discovered and surveyed
Hudson's Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth
centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters
into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round
America into the Pacific Ocean.

In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing
during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring
humanity! It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson's
Bay, but to get out of Hudson's Bay in the direction of the Arctic
Oc