Hebron, the fourth
station. 318

THE MORAVIANS IN LABRADOR.

INTRODUCTION.

The Moravian Mission in Labrador was attempted under circumstances
scarcely less discouraging than those under which the brethren were
enabled to achieve the moral conquest of Greenland, was attended with
incidents still more romantic, and blest with a success equally
remarkable. But it possesses a peculiar interest to British readers,
having been commenced under the auspices of the British government,
and promising a more extensive influence among tribes with whom
British intercourse is likely to produce a wider and more intimate
connection.

The Peninsula of Labrador extends from the 50th to the 61st deg. N.L.
It is somewhat of a triangular form; bounded on the north by Hudson's
Straits, and indented by Ungava Bay; on the east by the northern
ocean; on the south by Canada and the Gulph of St Lawrence; and on
the west by Hudson's and James' Bay, which last coast, by a kind of
anomaly in nomenclature, has been called the East Main, from its
situation to that great inland sea.

The German geographers do not appear to doubt, what some of our own
have called in question, that the discovery and the name of this
Peninsula, at least of its eastern shores, were owing to the
Portuguese, Gaspar Cortereal, who, in the years 1500 and 1501, in an
expedition fitted by the king to discover a western passage to India,
reached the coast of Newfoundland about the 50th deg. N.L., and sailed
northward to nearly the entrance into Hudson's Bay. This tract of
country was originally called after its discoverer, Terra Cortereali,
a name since superseded by that of Terra de Labrador--the land capable
of cultivation. Davis Straits, here about one hundred miles broad,
separates it from Greenland, whose southernmost point, Cape Farewell,
lies in the same degree of latitude, [60 N.L.] with Cape Chudleigh,
the northernmost extremity of Labrador. The Straits of Bellisle run
between it and Newfoundland. The land along the shore is abrupt and
precipitous, indented with many little creeks and vallies, surrounded
by innumerable islands, and rendered extremely dangerous of access
from the multitude of sunken rocks. The interior is mountainous,
intersected by marshes, and abounding with streamlets and lakes.

Detached from the Arctic lands, this country ought to partake in some
degree of the temperate cold