s. A few bands of Indians still
continue to rove the interior, occasionally coming out to the coast to
dispose of their furs, and obtain such meagre supplies as their mode
of life requires. The balance of the inhabitants of the country are
white men of our own blood and religion--men of the sea and dear to
the Anglo-Saxon heart.

During the past years it has been the experience of many of my
colleagues, as well as myself, that as soon as one mentions the fact
that part of our work is done on the north shore of Newfoundland,
one's audience loses interest, and there arises the question: "But
Newfoundland is a prosperous island. Why is it necessary to carry on a
charitable enterprise there?"

There is a sharp demarcation between main or southern Newfoundland and
the long finger of land jutting northward, which at Cape Bauld splits
the polar current, so that the shores of the narrow peninsula are
continuously bathed in icy waters. The country is swept by biting
winds, and often for weeks enveloped in a chilly and dripping blanket
of fog. The climate at the north end of the northward-pointing finger
is more severe than on the Labrador side of the Straits. Indeed, my
friend, Mr. George Ford, for twenty-seven years factor of the Hudson
Bay Company at Nakvak, told me that even in the extreme north of
Labrador he never really knew what cold was until he underwent the
penetrating experience of a winter at St. Anthony. The Lapp reindeer
herders whom we brought over from Lapland, a country lying well north
of the Arctic Circle, after spending a winter near St. Anthony, told
me that they had never felt anything like that kind of cold, and that
they really could not put up with it! The climate of the actual
Labrador is clear, cold, and still, with a greater proportion of
sunshine than the northern peninsula of Newfoundland. As a matter of
fact, our station at St. Anthony is farther north and farther east
than two of our hospitals on the Labrador side of the Straits of Belle
Isle. Along that north side the gardens of the people are so good that
their produce affords a valuable addition to the diet--but not so
here.

[Illustration: BATTLE HARBOUR]

The dominant industry of the whole Colony is its fisheries--the
ever-recurrent pursuit of the luckless cod, salmon, herring, halibut,
and lobster in summer, and the seal fishery in the month of March. It
is increasingly difficult to overestimate the importance, not merely
to the Bri