Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v108.djvu/550



aim (there are exceptions, of course) to keep the "liveyere" in debt—which is not by any means a difficult matter, for the "liveyere" is both shiftless and (what is more to the point) illiterate. So it comes about that what he may have to eat and wear depends upon the will of the "planter" and of the Company; and when for his ill luck or his ill will both cast him off—which sometimes happens—he looks starvation in the very face. A silver fox, of good fur and acceptable color, is the "liveyere's" great catch; no doubt his most ecstatic nightmare has to do with finding one fast in his trap; but when, "more by chance than good conduct," as they say, he has that heavenly fortune (the event is of the rarest), the Company pays $60 or $80 for that which it sells abroad for $600. Of late, however, the free-traders seem to have established a footing on the coast; their stay may not be long, but for the moment, at any rate, the "liveyere" may dispose of his fur to greater advantage—if he dare.

The earth yields the "liveyere" nothing but berries, which are abundant, and, in midsummer, "turnip tops"; and as numerous dogs are needed for winter travelling—wolfish creatures, savage, big, famished—no domestic animals can be kept. There was once a man who somehow managed for a season to possess a pig and a sheep; he marooned his dogs on an island half a mile off the coast; unhappily, however, there blew an offshore wind in the night, and next morning neither the pig nor the sheep was to be found; the dogs were engaged in innocent diversions on the island, but there was evidence sufficient on their persons, so to speak, to convict them of the depredation in any court of justice. There are no cows on the coast, no goats,—consequently no additional milk-supply for babies,—who manage from the beginning, however, to thrive on bread and salt beef, if put to the necessity. There are no pigs—there is one pig, I believe,—no sheep, no chickens; and the first horses to be taken to the sawmill on Hamilton Inlet so frightened the natives that they scampered in every direction for their