ends and the trappers return from their winter
trails, they enjoy a respite at home mending fishing nets, repairing
boats and making things tidy and ship-shape for the summer's fishing.
Everyone is now looking forward with keen anticipation to the first
run of fish. From the time the ice goes out all one hears along the
coast is talk of fish. "Any signs of fish, b'y?" One hears it
everywhere, for everybody is asking everybody else that question.

In Hamilton Inlet and Sandwich Bay salmon fisheries are of chief
importance. Salmon here are all salted down in barrels and not tinned,
as on the Pacific coast. Once there was a salmon cannery in Sandwich
Bay, but the Hudson's Bay Company bought it and demolished it, as
there was doubtless less work and more profit for the Company in
salted salmon. Elsewhere the fisheries are mainly for cod.

In a frontier land it is not easy to earn a living. Everybody must
work hard all the time. Men, women, boys and girls all do their share
at the fishing. Women and children help to split and cure the fish. It
is a proud day for any lad when he is big enough and strong enough to
pull a stroke with the heavy oar, and go out to sea with his father.

The Labrador, or Arctic, current now and again keeps ice drifting
along the coast the whole summer through. When ice is there fishermen
cannot set their nets and fish traps, for the ice would tear the gear
and ruin it. Neither can they fish successfully with hook and line
when the ice is in. When this happens few fish are caught.

Then, too, there are seasons when game and animals move away from
certain regions, and then the trapper cannot get them. Perhaps they go
farther inland, and too far for him to follow. I have seen times when
ptarmigans were so thick men killed them for dog food, and perhaps the
next year there would not be a ptarmigan to be found to put into the
pot for dinner. I have seen the snow trampled down everywhere in the
woods and among the brush by innumerable snowshoe rabbits, and I have
seen other years when not a single rabbit track was to be found
anywhere. It is the same with caribou and the fur bearing animals as
well. In those years when game is scarce the people are hard put to it
to get a bit of fresh meat to eat.

When no fresh meat is to be had salt fish, bread (rarely with butter)
and tea, with molasses as sweetening, is the diet. There is no milk,
even for the babies. If all the salt fish has been sold or traded