Behind the storm-scoured rocky islands lie the bays and tickles and
runs and at the head of the bays the forest begins, reaching back over
rolling hills into the mysterious and unknown regions beyond. There
is not one beaten road in all the land. There is no sandy beach, no
grassy bank, no green field. Nature has been kind to Labrador,
however, in one respect. There are innumerable harbors snugly
sheltered behind the islands and well out of reach of the rolling
breakers and the wind. There is an old saying down on the Labrador
that "from one peril there are two ways of escape to three sheltered
places." The ice and fog are always perils but the skippers of the
coast appear to hold them in disdain and plunge forward through storm
and sea when any navigator on earth would expect to meet disaster. For
the most part the coast is uncharted and the skippers, many of whom
never saw an instrument of navigation in their life, or at least never
owned one, sail by rhyme:
"When Joe Bett's P'int you is abreast,
Dane's Rock bears due west.
West-nor'west you must steer,
'Til Brimstone Head do appear.
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