THE LIVYERES.
[To THE EDITOR OP THE " SPECTATOR."]
8m—A chance meeting on board a ship brought to my know- ledge a remarkable story of work among an almost unknown people which seemed to me worthy of recounting in your columns. The people are the Livyeres of Northern Labrador. The name is no Anglicization of any Indian term: it means simply those who " live here," as opposed to the floating pope- ' latitm of whalers and traders. These Livyeres are descendants of Englishmen who married Eskimo women, and, like the `Bounty' mutineers, civilized them: their progeny, numbering some nine hundred souls, inhabiting a territory about nine hundred miles in extent, live in wooden houses with all the rougher appurtenances of civilization, and are devout Christians. They exist by fishing and trapping, of course undo, conditions of more or less chronic hardship and poverty. The: sent thirty-six men to the war, all of whom returned gladly k their homes in these wastes, ice-bound for nine months of tht year. In this neglected field three Oxford graduates have beet working : Dr. Grenfell, whose medical mission is well known. the Rev. Henry Gordon, and another. It was from Mr. Gordon that I learned the extraordinary story of these descen- dants of Englishmen who inhabit this barren shore. The last whaler of 1918 brought influenza to the Livyeres. It ran like a scourge through the country. Mr. Gordon, himself attacked, and unconscious for three days, was aroused from his stupor to dig graves in the frozen soil for the dead, working, half. conscious, day after day to bury them. Mr. Gordon has come to England to raise a small fund to provide a school-orphanage for the children of the influenza victims, and persons interested in this remarkable story may receive a pamphlet that ho has had printed by addressing him at The Vicarage, Prescot, Lancashire.—I am, Sir, &c., V. R. Estsxem.. Rodney Stoke, Somersetshire.
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