tish Empire, but to the entire world, of the invaluable
food-supply procured by the hardy fishermen of these northern waters.
Only the other day the captain of a patrol boat told me that he had
just come over from service on the North Sea, and in his opinion it
would be years before those waters could again be fished, owing to the
immense numbers of still active mines which would render such an
attempt disproportionately hazardous. From this point of view, if
from no other more disinterested angle, we owe a great and continuous
debt to the splendid people of Britain's oldest colony. It was among
these white fishermen that I came out to work primarily, the floating
population which every summer, some twenty thousand strong, visits the
coasts of Labrador; and later including the white resident settlers of
the Labrador and North Newfoundland coasts as well.

The conditions prevailing among some of the people at the north end of
Newfoundland and of Labrador itself should not be confused with those
of their neighbours to the southward. Chronic poverty is, however,
very far from being universally prevalent in the northern district.
Some of the fishermen lead a comfortable, happy, and prosperous life;
but my old diaries, as well as my present observations, furnish all
too many instances in which families exist well within the danger-line
of poverty, ignorance, and starvation.

The privations which the inhabitants of the French or Treaty shore and
of Labrador have had to undergo, and their isolation from so many of
the benefits of civilization, have had varying effects on the
residents of the coast to-day. While a resourceful and kindly, hardy
and hospitable people have been developed, yet one sometimes wonders
exactly into what era an inhabitant of say the planet Mars would place
our section of the North Country if he were to alight here some crisp
morning in one of his unearthly machines. For we are a reactionary
people in matters of religion and education; and our very "speech
betrays us," belonging as so many of its expressions do to the days
when the Pilgrims went up to Canterbury, or a certain Tinker wrote of
another and more distant pilgrimage to the City of Zion.

The people are, naturally, Christians of a devout and simple faith.
The superstitions still found among them are attributable to the
remoteness of the country from the current of the world's thought, the
natural tendency of all seafaring people, and the fact