This was Labrador as Grenfell found
Labrador, and as it is to-day--the great "silent peninsula of the
North." It occupies a large corner of the North American continent,
and much of it is still unexplored, a vast, grim, lonely land, but one
of majestic grandeur and beauty.
[Illustration: "THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY"]
The hardy pioneers and settlers of Labrador, as we have seen, have
made their homes only on the seacoast, leaving the interior to
wandering Indian hunters. They do, to be sure, enter the wilderness
for short distances in winter when they are following their business
as hunters, but none has ever made his home beyond the sound of the
sea.
In the forests of the south and southeast are the Mountaineer Indians,
as they are called by all English speaking people; or, if we wish to
put on airs and assume French we may call them the _Montaignais_
Indians. In the North are the Nascaupees, today the most primitive
Indians on the North American continent. In the west and southwest are
the Crees.
All of these Indians are of the great Algonquin family, and are much
like those that Natty Bumpo chummed with or fought against, and those
who lived in New York and New England when the settlers first came to
what are now our eastern states.
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