Labrador in Winter.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 456, 22 March 1890, Page 6

Labrador in Winter.

If there be anything like a social or home life in Labrador, it exists exclusively in the long, frozen night of winter. Then the entire inhabitants retire from the howling coast to winter quarters within the trifling shelter of spruce forests and protecting river crags, and from their burrows of sod, hut and ice, sally forth in their sledges or cometiques to ‘ visit ’ each other in their storm-swept settlements for distances of hundreds of miles. These trips are made over the glistening snow at the rate of sixty to one hundred miles a day, by the aid of their gaunt and ferocious dogs, which are kept in submission by that cruellest and deadliest of all drivers’ scourges, the Esquimau whip. Its handle is not a foot wrong, but its lash is often forty feet in length, and the drivers are so skilled in its use that a piece can be struck out of a ‘ leader ' or ‘ guide’ dog’s ear at a distance of from thirty to forty feet;-: These dogs, fully 150 of which I saw at Hopedale, are simply a species of partly domesticated wolves'. They are fed on fish once each day. In the summer they are sources of endless terror about the coast settlements ; but life would be impossible here without their use in winter. These visiting tours are marked by the most prodigal hospitality : and a good deal of rude pleasure, indeed, all these far-away humans in any manner secure, is enjoyed. But Labradorian life is an endless round of inane, sodden fruitlessness at best. The summer is passed in a scourging effort for winter’s provision. Winter brings its struggle to prevent death by cold and hunger. These human animals seem simply born to exist, be robbed and to die. One turns from the slightest glimpse of land and people, heartsick from irrevocability of the hopelessness of both. Labrador can never be else than what Jacques Cartier truly termed it in 1534, ‘ the land given to Cain.’— Edgar L. Wakeman. y