So far as I could judge from talking things over with the south coast trappers, most of the fur-bearing animals seem to be holding their own fairly well in the market. But it should be remembered that, with the recent great rise in prices, fewer skins may mean more money, and that even the establishment of fox farms, and the probable establishment of other fur farms, may not overtake the present increasing demand, which, in its turn, must tend to deplete the original source of supply still further, unless strict conservation is enforced. There was a wonderful supply of foxes a year ago, though nothing to the muskrats which swarmed down south last fall. But failure of food further north may have had more to do with those irruptions than any outburst of unusual fecundity. Caribou apparently remain much as they have been lately. But the hunger of wolves and the greed of men are two enemies that nothing but conservation can keep in check. Of course, genuinely "necessary food" is not at all in question. I know an old hunter, living at Pokkashoo in summer and St. Augustine in winter, who brought in sixteen caribou last season. But he gave fifteen away to really necessitous families and kept only one for himself.
The whale factories at Lark Harbour and Hawke Bay, on the west coast of Newfoundland, were both closed for want of whales. The only one in the Gulf that was working last year was at Seven Islands, on the North Shore, 300 miles below Quebec. I happened to be almost in at the death of the biggest finback ever taken. But, speaking generally, the season was not really prosperous. The station of Seven Islands is worked by Norwegians, who are the most exterminatingly efficient whalers in the world. They worked their own whaleries to exhaustion and raised so much feeling against them among the fishermen that the Norwegian government forbad every factory along the shore. They then invented floating factories, which may still be used in Canadian waters with deadly effect unless we put whaling under conservation. The feeling among the fishermen here is the same as elsewhere, strongly in favour of the whales and strongly against the exterminating kind of whaler, because whales are believed to drive the bait fish close inshore, which is very "handy" for the fishermen.
The spring sealing of 1912 was a failure on the Canadian Labrador, as the main "harp" herd was missed by just one day. The whole industry is carried on by Newfoundlanders and men whose vessels take their catch to Newfoundland, because the only working plant is concentrated there. The excessive spring kill greatly depletes the females and young, as it takes place in the whelping season, when the herds are moving north along the off-shore ice; and this depletion naturally spoils not only the Newfoundlanders' permanent industry itself but the much smaller inshore autumn catch by our own Canadian Labradorians, when the herds are moving south. The Canadians along the North Shore and Labrador look upon the invading Newfoundlanders, in this and other pursuits, very much as a farmer looks upon a gipsy whose horse comes grazing in his hayfield. And the analogy sometimes does hold good. When men under a different government, men who do not own a foot of land in Canada, men who do not pay specific taxes for Canadian rights, when these men slaughter seals on inshore ice, use land and inlets for cleaning fish and foul the water with their "gurry", and when they also "egg" on other peoples' islands in defiance of the law, then the analogy is perfect. It does not hold good, of course, in ordinary fishing, which is conducted under Dominion licence and vigilantly watched by Commander Wakeham. But whether Canada is not giving away too much for what she gets in licences is quite another question.
The excessive spring kill by the Newfoundlanders does not seem to be the only reason why the local seal hunt is not so good as it used to be. The whites complain that the Indians along the coast kill an undue number of seals on the one hand and of caribou on the other. But fishermen all the world over are against the harbour seals; and generally exaggerate their depredations, as they exaggerate the depredations of most kinds of seabirds. Whatever the fate of the harbour seals should be, there can be no doubt that the harps or Greenland seals, the bearded or square-flippers, the grey or horseheads, and the gigantic and magnificently game hoods, should all be put under conservation. I am also inclined to think that the walrus could be coaxed back to what once were some of his most favourite haunts. Just now he has no chance whatever; and he is so extremely rare that the one I nearly rowed the dinghy into last August, down at Whale Head East, was only the second seen inside the Straits during the present century.
III. PLAN OF CONSERVATION FOR THE CANADIAN LABRADOR.
Whaling, sealing and deep-sea fishing are Dominion and international affairs; and whaling, at all events, is soon to engage the attention of statesmen, experts and the public—let us hope, to some good end. The inland birds and mammals from the St. Lawrence to Ungava now come under the Province of Quebec; though no effective protection has ever reached the Canadian Labrador. Beyond this, again, lies the Atlantic Labrador, which is entirely under Newfoundland. So I would suggest that the Commission should try a five-year experiment in the conservation of seabird life along the Canadian Labrador, because this would not come into overlapping contact with any other exercised authority, because it is bound to be successful, because it will only cost a sum that should be had for the asking, because it is most urgently pressing, and because it can be begun at once, to the lasting advantage of all concerned.
The "Canadian Labrador" is the last remaining vestige of the No-Man's-Land which, only a hundred years ago, began at the Saguenay, within 120 miles of Quebec. Then, as the organised "North Shore" advanced down stream, the unorganised "Canadian Labrador" receded before it. Fifty years ago the dividing line was at Seven Islands, 300 miles below Quebec. To-day it runs just east of Natashquan and is a full 500 miles below.
There is no stranger country anywhere than this Canadian Labrador. Dr Grenfell's Labrador, which has nothing to do with Canada, is known to everyone. But the very existence of our own Labrador, with its 200 miles of coastline and its more than 20,000 islands, is quite unknown, as a separate entity, to all but a very few outside of its little, but increasing, population of 1200 souls. It lies on the north shore of the Gulf, just inside the Straits of Belle Isle, and runs from Bradore in the east to Kegashka in the west. Here, close beside the crowded track of ocean liners, and well below the latitude of London, is by far the most southerly arctic region in the world. It is a land of rock and moss; for, except along the river valleys, there are neither grass nor trees. No crops are grown or ever can be grown. There are no horses, cattle, poultry, pigs or sheep. Reindeer are said to be coming. But there are none at present. The only domestic animals are dogs, that howl like wolves, but never bark. And yet it is a country which is rich, and might he richer still, in fish and fur, and which seems formed by Nature to be a perfect paradise of all that is most desirable in the wild life of the north, especially in the seabirds that are now being done to death among its countless archipelagoes.
Its natural features are not the only strange things in it. It is a curiosity of government, or, rather, of the want of government. It is in the Province of Quebec and in the Dominion; yet, in one sense, not of either. For it in the only place of its kind inhabited by educated whites, in any part of the self-governing Empire, where no man has ever cast a single vote or ever had the right to cast one. The electoral line stops short at Natashquan, 36 miles west of Kegashka. So 1200 good Canadians have no vote. They are dumb and their two governments are deaf. They have bought their little holdings from the Province; and they pay Canadian custom dues to the Dominion, on everything they get from the Quebec truck traders or the Hudson Bay posts, in exchange for their fish and fur. But they do not enjoy even the elementary right of protection from depredation committed by men who have no claim on Canada at all. Let me add that by this I do not mean for one moment to abuse my friends the Newfoundlanders. A kindlier people I have never met. Nor do I mean to abuse the Americans and Nova Scotians who sometimes slink inside the three-mile limit. But I do mean to draw attention to the regrettable fact that the absence of all wild-life conservation is becoming ruinous to everyone concerned—even to the exterminating Newfoundlanders, who are now making our shores as bleak a desert as they have made their own.