Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 27.djvu/247

Rh London every year transports the stock thus accumulated to London, where it is sold for the benefit of the mission, and in this way a considerable income is secured annually. In reference to the work thus carried on by the missionaries, Lieutenant Gordon pays them a well deserved compliment by giving it as his opinion that their system of dealing with the natives, when honorably carried out, as it has been, and is on the Labrador coast, is the one which best meets the wants of the natives, and tends to the improvement of their condition.

So much has been said by Arctic explorers about the incorrigible kleptomania of the natives they encountered, that we read with no less surprise than gratification this testimony as to the moral condition of the Eskimos at Hudson Strait: "One word may be said in regard to their honesty. Although scraps of iron and wood possess a value to them which we can hardly appreciate, they would take nothing without first asking permission; not even a chip or broken nail was taken without their first coming to the officer who was on duty at the building for permission to take it."

In the matter of animals, the Hudson Bay region is quite as scantily supplied as it is in human inhabitants, the list of terrestrial mammalia comprising only four species, namely, the polar bear, the fox, the hare, and the reindeer. The skin of the polar bear is quite valuable, a good one bringing twelve dollars with the agents of the Hudson Bay Company. These animals, although reported by the Eskimos to be very savage, will not, as a rule, attack human beings unless first wounded or rendered desperate by hunger, under which circumstances any beast of prey becomes an undesirable neighbor. The Eskimos on the south side of the strait stated that, at certain times of the year, there were large numbers of these animals seen. Their meat is not unpalatable, but the liver is said to be poisonous. Of foxes there are three kinds found, to wit, the white, the blue, and the red. The white species would seem to be very numerous, judging from the number of skins seen with the natives. These skins, however, have no commercial value. The blue fox is properly of a steel-gray color. The skins are in good demand; but the animals are not at all numerous. As to the red fox, its sole value consists in the fact that its presence indicates the "possibility of that most precious of all pelts—a black fox's—being somewhere in the vicinity. This species is met with on the south side of the strait, and black foxes are annually shot or trapped in the country south of Cape Chudleigh. The most important and beneficent of all the animals of the country, however, is the reindeer, which furnishes food and clothing, and much more, too, for its Eskimo master. The hare is common over the whole coast, and with game-birds of many kinds—geese, swans, duck, and ptarmigan—will no doubt furnish many a toothsome dish for the tables of the men at the various stations.

Having thus traversed the whole ground sought to be covered by the expedition, Lieutenant Gordon brings his admirable report to a