of
starvation.

When I look about me and see this poverty, the ignorance born of lack
of opportunity, the suffering, the dirt, and degradation which are in
so large a measure no fault of these poor folk, I am overwhelmed at
the wealth of opportunities. Here at least every talent one has to
offer counts for double what it would at home.

Thousands of fishermen come from the south each spring to take part in
the summer's fishery. The Labrador "liveyeres," who remain on the
coast all the year round, often have only little one-roomed huts made
of wood and covered with sods. In the winter the northern people move
up the bays and go "furring." Both the Indians and Eskimos are
diminishing in numbers, and the former at the present time do not
amount to more than three or four thousand persons--and of these the
Montagnais tribe make up more than half. The Moravian missionaries
have toiled untiringly amongst the Eskimos, and assuredly not for any
earthly reward. They go out as young men and practically spend their
whole life on the coast, their wives being selected and sent out to
them from home!

The work of this Mission is among the white settlers. In the Home we
have only one pure Eskimo, a few half-breeds (Indians and Eskimo), and
the remainder are of English descent. Almost all are from Labrador.

I often fancy that I must surely have slept the sleep of Rip Van
Winkle. When he woke he found that the world had marched ahead a
hundred years. With me the process is reversed. I am almost inclined
to yield a grudging agreement to the transmigrationalists, and believe
that I am re-living one of my former existences. For the part of the
country in which I have awakened is a generation or so behind the
world in which we live. There is no education worthy of the name, in
many places no schools at all, and in others half-educated teachers
eking out a miserable existence on a mere pittance. This is chiefly
due to the antediluvian custom of dividing the Government educational
grant on a denominational basis. A large proportion of the people can
neither read nor write. There are no roads, no means of communication,
no doctors or hospitals (save the Mission ones), no opportunities for
improvement, no industrial work, practically no domestic animals, and
on Labrador, taxation without representation! There is only one
hospital provided by the Government for the whole of this island, and
that one is at St. John's, which is inaccessible