Raymond stayed a week in the neighborhood and then returned to London, leaving his ring in Bess's keeping but extracting no definite promise from her before departing. He preferred to wait, he said, and meanwhile Bess was not to worry-though she was to think of him as much as possible, she was not to endeavor to The Times.

come to any fixed decision with regard to him.

"When a man has waited as long as I have, he can afford to wait a little longer," he said.

He held her hand a moment at parting, but he did not kiss it; and when he had gone, Bess went upstairs to her room and cried.

It must be acknowledged that there is something extraordinarily attractive about a hunting ground that is still virgin, especially when it holds out a prospect of illimitable square miles of country and endless possibilities of anticipation, even if these latter never materialize.

It was with this most elusive charm about its practically untrodden interior that I embarked for the Labrador Peninsula in the early autumn of 1903, with the hope of finding out how and where there was a reasonable chance of coming in view of the herds of barren land caribou which roam at large through that houseless land. There was everything to learn and few people to be met with who possessed any exact knowledge. Indeed several hours spent among the whalers and about the wharves of the "South Side" of the estuary of St. John's, the capital of Newfoundland, bore next to no result, since the cod-fishers, who had experience of the Labrador, although well acquainted with the sea and all that therein is of those latitudes, knew singularly little of the vast interior upon whose foreshore they had spent many a bitter summer.

A map told no more, but the Reid Newfoundland Company kindly provided me passage in the Virginia Lake, adding their good wishes for

the success of one of the first sportsmen to leave behind the well-stocked barrens of Newfoundland with a view to going farther afield and-probablyfaring worse.

For nearly seven months of every year Labrador above the fiftieth parallel is shut off from the rest of the world by a barrier of ice, its only communication being maintained by a komatik or dog-sledge post that arrives about Christmas. During the summer its desolate settlements receive a fortnightly or three-weekly visit from the mail-boat Virginia Lake, the Hudson's Bay steamer the Pelican on summer service to their ports, the Strathcona of the Deep-Sea Mission carrying the gallant Grenfell on his errands of mercy, and the Harmony which brings supplies to the Moravian Mission stations; these, with the codfishery fleets sum up the usual traffic of the open season.

As might be expected, Labrador is one of the most thinly populated countries in the world. Its native population consists of a few hundreds of Indians in the far interior and a few groups of Eskimo on the coast; to these may be added the "liveyeres," or "live heres" as the white settlers are called, the factors of the Hudson's Bay Company's posts, and last but not least the missionaries of the Moravian

Church, a body of men who yield to none in the singleness and nobility of their aims, and-often a very different thing, alas!-in the adequate methods by which they pursue them. So much for the residents all the year round. In early summer their numbers are increased by the cod fleet from Newfoundland, who at the earliest moment that the weather permits battle north in their schooners and take possession of their little wooden stations which dot the coast from Square Island to Fanny's Harbor. Their season lasts from June to October, and during this period they work as hard as men on a Polar Expedition.

The Labrador, thanks to the Moravians and the Deep-Sea Mission with the indefatigable Dr. Grenfell at its head, is a most God-fearing region. At the cod stations they will not even dry fish on a Sunday. On a certain glorious Sunday morning, the head of one of these little colonies remarked ruefully, "If to-day had been yesterday, I'd have got every kental dried, and now maybe we'll have no sun until we sail." An eventuality which would have meant the loss of many hundred dollars; but fortunately on this occasion the sun shone brightly not only on Monday but even on Tuesday.

It was already late in September when, accompanied by Jack Wells, now one of the best-known Newfoundland guides, but then promoted from a camp-cook and handyman to be a full-blown guide for the first time, I went aboard the Virginia Lake, sole passengers, and started on a coasting ship's slow passage up the peninsula. The steamer called at fifty-four points before, after two abortive attempts, we finally landed, during a half-gale from the S.E., at Fanny's Harbor.

We had no sooner gone ashore than our medical knowlege-if we had any -was requisitioned for the cook,

whose hand had been poisoned by a cod bone and whose arm was frightfully swollen. As, however, there was a Government doctor on board the Virginia Lake, and the ship would call at Fanny's Harbor on her return trip, my medical skill was only tested to the extent of a poultice and bandaging, which was doubtless a lucky thing for the cook. A couple of days later, as Jack Wells and I were returning from shooting, a loud and dolorous cry was accounted for by the information that the mail-boat doctor was "putting cook to rights."

Fanny's Harbor is an island settlement, and as the "liveyere" who carries the mail across to the mainland had, for some unexplained reason, departed on the day previous to the arrival of the Virginia Lake, we were in a sense marooned upon the island, where, however, we sought popularity by the timely slaughter of an arctic hare and a brace of ducks.

The gale held for two days before, weary of waiting, I at length prevailed upon the head of the settlement to lend me a trap-boat with a crew to row her and in the black of dawn, after a most glorious display of Aurora Borealis, the "searchlights of God," we set off for Davis Inlet, twenty miles away.

Before leaving St. John's, I had arranged with the Reid Company to send the Virginia Lake to call for us at Fanny's Harbor about October 17 or 18. In view of possible contingencies, and to secure as much time for hunting as possible, I purchased the trap-boat, and in the event it proved useful.

We started before dawn, as at that hour the wind had died away and the dangerous passage between the twin rocks which guard the entrance to Fanny's Harbor seemed practicable. Soon the settlement was standing behind us, a compact rocky mass against the dawn, as the boat, propelled by six

crept

enormous and clumsy oars, slowly out from its shadow. To starboard the swell was bursting upon the bases of seven or eight huge icebergs, while upon the port side of our little craft lay the wild coast of Labrador, low and bare until it rose into massive headlands to the south.

Rain commenced to fall at dawn, and about midday it became obvious that we should not be able to make Davis Inlet before dark, and as no one aboard had a pilot's knowledge of any save the rocks and reefs of Fanny's Harbor the helm was perforce put over and we headed for Jack Lane's Bay, a deep creek upwards of a dozen miles long, on the north side of which, I was told, there dwelt an old trapper named Sam Broomfield, who had killed some deer the previous season.

At first, upon both sides of the Inlet, the shores were flat and treeless, but as mile joined mile in our wake, patches of hardy conifers became more and more frequent. A number of waders with long yellow legs, locally known as "twillig," haunted these flat shores, and one or two that flew over the boat were saluted with a paradox shot-gun. Ultimately, three twilligs and a red-breasted merganser made up the bag. Just before we came in sight of Broomfield's house an exceedingly wild seal, of the species known as harbor seal, or bay seal, an animal identical with our common seal, Phoca vitulina, showed at a distance of about three hundred yards, but having evidently had some former experience of boats, it dived immediately, only to reappear some ten minutes later in midestuary.

As a matter of fact, seals are wilder about Labrador than in any waters I have visited, excepting only the Froien, off the coast of Norway, a group of bare islands almost cut by the Arctic circle. Of course, the reason of the wariness of the seals in

Labrador waters is not far to seek. The skin, flesh, and blubber form very important assets in the lives of the shore-dwellers.. Boots made of sealskin are the universal foot-gear, and fetch about 8s. a pair. I afterwards found that in the making of these boots, and indeed in all Arctic needlework, Mrs. Sam Broomfield stood unrivalled even by the Eskimo. She uses the pelt of the comon seal for the legs and that of the square-flipper for the soles, while she ornaments the top with a fringe of ring-seal. Boots and moccasins made by her are sought after far and wide. While I was up country she made me a camera-case and a cartridge bag of sealskin, both of which show absolutely no sign of wear even after the many hard trips they have undergone.

However we have travelled ahead of the boat, which soon beached beneath the cabin. Our landing was attended by a dozen huskies, animals which recent fiction has glorified beyond their deserts. These dogs, led by a bulky animal called Buller, watched us disembark with their bright eyes. Fiction has said how the moment a husky vanquished in fight loses its legs, its team-mates fall upon and tear it to pieces, but fiction has not added that a child, or even in some instances an adult, must also keep his feet to secure safety from a similar fate. A few months before our visit, a child at Cartwright, one of the Hudson's Bay posts, slipped upon a wooden jetty and fell amongst the huskies. There were upwards of fifty bites upon her before her mother, who showed the highest courage, succeeded in driving the brutes off. During the daytime the husky is fairly amenable to the wellaimed stone, but at night, or under stress of temptation, the savage wolfnature breaks out at once. I can remember an anxious pilgrimage I made in the starshine to fetch a shirt I had

left to dry on the bushes, during which I was accompanied by Buller and his fellows, all treading delicately.

In the summer-time the ordinary Labrador liveyere does not trouble himself over-much with the problem of dog-food. If he happens to catch a fish unfit for human consumption, he carries it home for the dogs; if not, the animals are left unfed and support themselves by theft or by long hunting expeditions. On one occasion I nearly added a husky to my bag. I came upon him among the spruces some miles inland, and had already thrown the rifle to my shoulder when I recognized that the creature slinking through the shadows was not a wolf but a dog.

Summer is the hard season for the husky, his owners probably thinking that as he does no work at that time he needs no food; but as soon as the snow comes and the komatiks, or sledges, appear the lot of the husky undergoes a change. He is then fed and looked after as much as he needs and, the latter at least, more than he likes. He is then the outward and visible sign of the prosperity and status of his owner. A man possessing four dogs is poor, eight makes him well-to-do, while a liveyere who can count upon sixteen has attained the dignity of a solid yeoman of the Labrador.

But the huskies have taken us far from our theme. Mrs. Broomfield told us that her husband and son were in summer quarters at the end of the bay, so after a most grateful cup of tea we once more manned our trap-boat, and pursued our way between the now indrawing shores. Rather more than a couple of hours brought us within sight of our destination and of two men in green flatbottomed boats, who were seal-hunting at the mouth of a river. These proved to be Broomfield and his son, and

they rowed out to meet us, so that very soon we were all on shore collected round a fire. The same even

ing our crew left us, as the wind had shifted to a quarter which promised a clear run down the estuary, and Jack and I were left with the trappers.

That night, as we smoked our pipes in the glow of the camp fire, we gained at last some first-hand information about the caribou.

For the previous seven or eight years one of the main herds (so far as I know it is generally believed there are three in the peninsula) put in an appearance in the vicinity of Sam Bromfield's house between November 5 and 19. Only the year before the old trapper and his son had shot thirty animals, and Mrs. Broomfield had watched a part of the migration from her back window. These facts, though exceedingly interesting, came in the nature of a blow to my hopes, for it was perfectly obvious that, as I had to join the steamer at Fanny's Harbor on October 16, the caribou would still be some hundreds of miles to the north-west when I must perforce say farewell to Jack Lane's Bay.

Though bereft of any chance of seeing "la foule," as the French Canadians of Hudson's Bay call the great migration of the caribou, Sam considered it quite possible that we might, to use his own words, "come up with some stags that's got left behind," and with a view to doing this our party of four traversed the woods and barrens round the end of the Inlet for the next few days. Our efforts proved entirely fruitless, for we saw neither track nor sign of any animal whatever save foxes. Once Sam, looking over the vast landscape of fir and spruce, interspersed with wide and dismal marshes, said, "The Labrador do make a man feel terrible lonesome." I don't think any words could have bettered this description.

It brought to mind also the fact that here in the far north, where the limitless barrens set no bounds to his wanderings, the caribou is a most elusive animal, capricious and uncertain in the line of his migrations. Yet the Indians, Yellow-knives from beyond the Peace,River, Montaguais and Nascaupees of Labrador have nothing but the herds between them and the grim shape of "Bukadawin" (famine) who sat in Hiawatha's wigwam. Bands of the Indians pass away into the barrens every year to search for the caribou; if they cut the line of migration they fare sumptuously, and, moreover, make provision for the winter for their families. But should they fail to meet them there is often an end to their hunting, and the squaws down in the timber lands watch in vain for their return. How many times, one wonders, has a company of Indians struggled forward, staring at the horizon, where white snow meets gray sky, straining their eyes for the shapes which are perhaps passing in thousands just beyond a man's sight to the east or the west of them. The story is told of such a party of hunters, who waited and watched in vain. One died and then another; whatever weakness any individual had, it found him out, until at last but two were left, and they also had turned their faces to the skin wall of the fireless tent, when the stronger, crawling to the door, saw a forest of horns growing up against the wide sunrise as unnumbered deer moved slowly out of the north-east.

Having exhausted the huntinggrounds about the Inlet, we derived some fresh encouragement from a statement of Sam's to the effect that one September some seventeen years earlier a band of Eskimo had visited a lake lying to the south-west and there had killed nineteen deer and two black bears. He further said that we

could reach another lake on the same chain by travelling up Jack's Brook, a stream which flows into the Inlet from the north. Also that by taking this route I should include in my hunting-ground the large sand-ridges which run inland in that neighborhood. Were I to go to Labrador again, I should follow a different route and would, I think, run every chance of reaching the main herd of so-called barrenland caribou. This herd is on the barrens in August, and during that month enters the isolated timber, working out to the coast on the following November.

Thus it would appear that the herd spends its year half in the woodlands and half upon the barrens and for that reason it would seem as if the name barrenland caribou is a misnomer. The animals are smaller than their Newfoundland collaterals and carry fine antlers; one in my possession measures fifty-six inches in length, and another carries a pair of brow-antlers always rare in the caribou-and counts forty-five points. These two

heads were shot from the herd which reaches the coast in the neighborhood of Davis Inlet.

It only remained to follow Broomfield's counsel and try our luck at Jack's Brook, in the hopes of finding a stag that had summered upon one of the sandy ridges. According to Sam, some ten or fifteen years earlier a few deer were always to be found on the edges of the high bare upland which stretches from within a mile of his house right into the interior of the peninsula of Labrador. In winter the Broomfields, father and son, make long trapping expeditions by komatik through this country, but for many years it has been left in peace by the Eskimo, who now hunt only in spring. Eleven years had passed, Broomfield said, since he had killed a deer in summer or early fall and it was upon