On the beams overhead are rifles and shotguns, always within easy reach, for a shot at some game may offer at any time. The side walls of the cabins are papered with old newspapers, or illustrations cut from old magazines.
The more thrifty and cleanly scrub floors, tables, doors and all woodwork with soap and sand once a week, until everything is spotlessly clean. But along the coast one comes upon cabins often enough that appear never to have had a cleaning day, and in which the odor of seal oil and fish is heavy.
Those of the Newfoundland fishermen that bring their families to the coast live in all sorts of cabins. Some are well built and comfortable, while others are merely sod-covered huts with earthen floor. These are occupied, however, only during the fishing season. The fishermen move into them early in July and begin to leave them early in September.
As stated elsewhere, no farming can be done in Labrador, and the only way men can make a living is by hunting and fishing. Eskimos seldom venture far inland on their hunting and trapping expeditions, but some of the liveyeres go fifty or sixty miles from the coast to set their traps, and some of those in Hamilton Inlet go up the Grand River for a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles, and others go up the Nascaupee River for upwards of a hundred miles.
Trapping is all done in winter and it is a lonely and adventurous calling. Early in September, the men who go the greatest distance inland set out for their trapping grounds. Usually two men go together. They build a small log hut called a "tilt," about eight by ten feet in size. Against each of two sides a bunk is made of saplings and covered with spruce or balsam boughs. On the boughs the sleeping bags are spread, and the result is a comfortable bed. The bunks also serve as seats. A little sheet iron stove that weighs, including stovepipe, about eighteen pounds and is easy to transport, heats the tilt, and answers very well for the trapper's simple cooking. The stovepipe, protruding through the roof, serves as a chimney.
The main tilt is used as a base of supplies, and here reserve provisions are stored together with accumulations of furs as they are caught. Fat salt pork, flour, baking powder or soda, salt, tea and Barbadoes molasses complete the list of provisions carried into the wilderness from the trading post. Other provisions must be hunted.
Each man provides himself with a frying pan, a tin cup, a spoon or two, a tin pail to serve as a tea kettle and sometimes a slightly larger pail for cooking. On his belt he carries a sheath knife, which he uses for cooking, skinning, eating and general utility. He rarely encumbers himself with a fork.
For use on the trail each man has a stove similar to the one that heats the tilt, a small cotton tent, and a toboggan.
From the base tilt the trapping paths or trails lead out. Each trapper has a path which he has established and which he works alone. He hauls his sleeping bag, provisions and other equipment on his toboggan or, as he calls it, "flat sled." He carries his rifle in his hand and his ax is stowed on the toboggan, for he never knows when a quick shot will get him a pelt or a day's food.
Sometimes tilts are built along the path at the end of a day's journey, but if there is no tilt the cotton tent is pitched. In likely places traps are set for marten, mink or fox. Ice prevents trapping for the otter in winter, but they are often shot.