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Updated: June 29, 2025
The Canadians along the North Shore and Labrador look upon the invading Newfoundlanders, in this and other pursuits, very much as a farmer looks upon a gipsy whose horse comes grazing in his hayfield. And the analogy sometimes does hold good.
The excessive spring kill greatly depletes the females and young, as it takes place in the whelping season, when the herds are moving north along the off-shore ice; and this depletion naturally spoils not only the Newfoundlanders' permanent industry itself but the much smaller inshore autumn catch by our own Canadian Labradorians, when the herds are moving south.
Instead of being a province of Canada, as is often supposed, and an arrangement which some of us firmly believe would result in the ultimate good of the Newfoundlanders, it stands in the same relationship to England as does the great Dominion herself.
Our first afternoon on Labrador soil we spent in assorting and packing our outfit, while the Newfoundlanders and livyeres stood around and admired our things, particularly the canoe, guns, and sheath-knives. Their curiosity was insatiable; they inquired the cost of every conceivable thing.
The Newfoundlanders are a prolific race, and life is consequently doubly hard on the women. Her husband died last fall, leaving her without a sou, and no roof over her head. The Mission gave her a sort of shack, and took two of her kiddies into the Home. The place was too crowded at the time to take any more.
In my notebook for 1895 I find the following: "The desolation of Labrador at this time is easy to understand. No Newfoundlanders were left north of us; not a vessel in sight anywhere. The ground was all under snow, and everything caught over with ice except the sea. I think that I must describe one house, for it seems a marvel that any man could live in it all winter, much less women and children.
Of course when the lights were turned up in the interval, one beheld the usual spectacle: stretchers, wheeled chairs, crutches, bandaged heads, arms in splints, blind men, men with one arm, men with one leg: rank on rank of war's flotsam and jetsam, British, Australians, New Zealanders, Newfoundlanders, Canadians, come to make merry over the minstrels: in the front row the Colonel and the Matron, with officer patients; here and there an orderly or a V.A.D.; here and there a Sister with her "boys."
When I had our camp baggage transferred next morning to the wharf, and George and I had arrived there ourselves, we found also waiting for the steamer several prospectors who were going to "The Labrador," as the country is known to the Newfoundlanders, to look for gold, copper, and mica. All of them apparently were dreaming of fabulous wealth.
Two Newfoundlanders were once fishing in an open boat, when an octopus attacked the boat, reaching for it with two enormous arms, with the purpose of dragging it down. One of the fishermen seized an ax that lay handy in the boat and chopped the arms off. The octopus sank and all the sea about was made black with its screen of ink. The sections of arms cut off were nineteen feet in length.
And here the dog Crusoe was born; here he sprawled in the early morn of life; here he leaped, and yelped, and wagged his shaggy tail in the excessive glee of puppyhood; and from the wooden portals of this block-house he bounded forth to the chase in all the fire, and strength, and majesty of full-grown doghood. Crusoe's father and mother were magnificent Newfoundlanders.
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