Should meat again.

The spelling may not always be according to Webster, but the
sentiments portray the love and hope of a God-fearing people
unspoiled by the roughening touch of civilization.

I must to bed. Stupidly enough, this climate gives me insomnia.
Probably it is the mixture of the cold and the long twilight (I can
read at 9.30), and the ridiculous habit of growing light again at
about three in the morning. I am beginning to have a fellow feeling
with the chickens of Norway, poor dears!

_August 9_

I want to violently controvert your disparaging remarks about this
"insignificant little island." Do you realize that this same
"insignificant little island" is four times bigger than Scotland, and
that it has under its dominion a large section of Labrador? If, as the
local people say, "God made the world in five days, made Labrador on
the sixth, and spent the seventh throwing stones at it," then a goodly
portion of those stones landed by mischance in St. Antoine. Indeed, Le
Petit Nord and Labrador are so much alike in climate, people, and
conditions that this part of the island is often designated locally as
Labrador (never has it been my lot to see a more desolate, bleak, and
barren spot). The traveller who described Newfoundland as a country
composed chiefly of ponds with a little land to divide them from the
sea, at least cannot be impeached for unveracity. In this northern
part even that little is rendered almost impenetrable in the
summer-time by the thick under-brush, known as "tuckamore," and the
formidable swarms of mosquitoes and black flies. All the inhabitants
live on the coast, and the interior is only travelled over in the
winter with komatik and dogs.

No, I am _not_ living in the midst of Indians or Eskimos. Please be
good enough to scatter this information broadcast, for each letter
from England reveals the fear that I am in imminent danger of being
scalped alive or buried in an igloo. There are a few scattered Eskimos
on Le Petit Nord, but for the most part the inhabitants are whites and
half-breeds. The Indians live almost entirely in the interior of
Labrador and the Eskimos around the Moravian stations. I am living
amongst the descendants of the fishermen of Dorset and Devon who came
out about two hundred years ago and settled on this coast for the
cod-fishery. Those who live in the south are comparatively well off,
but many in the north are in great poverty and often on the verge