LABRADOR.* TRzeit two books are curiously different, but they are
alike in showing us the adventurous Englishman. George Cart- wright, brother of John, the Radical politician, and Edmund, the inventor of the power-loom, went mit to Labrador in 1770 to make his fortune. He stopped there, off and on, for sixteen years. The fortune he never made ; he had several set-backs in the effort, among them being the spoiling of his goods by an American privateer in 1778; but he did some good work. We can hardly allow that be did all that he claims, in a curious poem, to have done in reforming the Eskimos, so that whereas they bad been "a People fierce and rude, Their savage hands in Human blood imbrued," now
"Not a more honest or more generous Race Can bless a Sovereign or a Nation grace."
His moral code left something to be desired. There is a curious story of how be offered to relieve an Eskimo friend of a second wife, who had not turned out satisfactorily. But he was honest and just in all his commercial dealings, while making it plain at the same time that he was not to be cheated or bullied. These traits come out clearly in his journal with a vast amount of miscellaneous details of sport, if shooting and fishing for subsistence can be so described ; of trade dealings ; and a rough- and-ready discipline exercised over thieves and shirkers, with now and then it tragic touch. Such is the story of the Eskimos whom he took with him to England. All but one died of small- pox. The scene when the news was told to the tribe was very pathetic. Cartwright was moved to tears : "They instantly seemed to forget their own feelings to relieve those of mine.' They crowded round him, doing all they could to show that they did not blame him.
Mr. Prichard's story is of sport, and a very entertaining one, too ; possibly we hear too much of the mosquitoes, but any one who knows what a plague the far less formidable " midge " in Scotland can be will understand what an impres- sion they must have made. Mr. Prichard is at great pains to show that it is a better speculation for the sportsman, whether be be gunner or angler, to follow his amusement in Labrador than in Norway. Cheaper it certainly is ; but his own very picturesque narrative convinces us that it is more full of peril. One unlucky adventurer actually met with his death from starvation in 1903, and Mr. Prichard and his comrades were within measurable distance of the same catastrophe. It will be understood that the scene of the adventure was not on the coast of Labrador, but in the interior. The coast is now com- paratively well known ; but a day's march inland takes the traveller into an unexplored region, and, as our author describes
a very unlovely one.
Previous page
