are turning more and more to wild Nature for a
holiday. And their interest in Nature is widening and deepening in
proportion. I do not say this as a rhetorical flourish. I have taken
particular pains to find out the actual growth of this interest, which
is shown in ways as comprehensive as educational curricula, picture
books for children, all sorts of "Animal" works, "zoos", museums,
lectures, periodicals and advertisements; and I find all facts
pointing the same way. The president of one of the greatest
publishers' associations in the world told me, and without being
asked, that the most marked and the steadiest development in the trade
was in "Nature" books of every kind. And this reminds me of the
countless readers who rarely hear the call of the wild themselves,
except through word and picture, but who would bitterly and
justifiably resent the silencing of that call in the very places where
it ought to be heard at its best.

Now, where can the call of wild Nature be heard to greater advantage
than in Labrador, which is a land made on purpose to be the home of
fur, fin and feather? And it is accessible, in the best of all
possible ways--by sea. It is about equidistant from central Canada,
England and the States--a wilderness park for all of them. Means of
communication are multiplying fast. Even now, it would be possible, in
a good steamer, to take a month's holiday from London to Labrador,
spending twenty days on the coast and only ten at sea. I think we may
be quite sure of such travel in the near future; that is, of course,
if the travellers have a land of life, not death, to come to. And an
excellent thing about it is that Labrador cannot be overrun and spoilt
like what our American friends so aptly call a "pocket wilderness".
Ten wild Englands, properly conserved, cannot be brought into the
catalogue of common things quite so easily as all that! Besides,
Labrador enjoys a double advantage in being essentially a seaboard
country. The visitor has the advantage of being able to see a great
deal of it--and the finest parts, too--without getting out of touch
with his moveable base afloat. And the country itself has the
corresponding advantage of being less liable to be turned into a
commonplace summer resort by the whole monotonizing apparatus of
hotels and boarding houses and conventional "sights".

And now, Sir, I venture once more to mention the higher interests, and
actually to specify one of them, although I