Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-08-03
OFF LONE LABRADOR.
A Rockbound Coast Haunted by Ship
wreck, Death and Disaster.
THE EARLY BASQUE SEA R0VERs
Who Discovered America 1000 Years Before
Columbus Sailed
TO SEEK FOR THE LAND OF PROMISE

IFaoM OUR TRAVELLING coMMIssIoNER.i
On BOARD SCHOONER SOPHIE, July %.
Our steamer passed Belle Isle, that huge
island rock of loneliness and desolation
guarding the Gulf of Newfoundland, be-
tween Newfoundland and Labrador, just
after the light swept past US from the east
and the sea, and, sailing all day within
sight of those northern massive walls whose
vast escarpments of red, puce and gray.
seemed set like the bases of mighty castles
upon an emerald bed, the contemplation OF
the vastness, mystery and desolation of this
most useless and peopleless portion Of
America, Labrador. prompted an impulse
to at least skim its edges in still more
leisurely form Of lettering and pilgrimage.
An English tourist was easily persuaded
into joining me in plan for brief northern
adventure; and, debarking at Rimouski, we
came upon q veteran Yankee lumberman
with the fever of exploration strong on him.
and in less than "a hours, having found
many happenings to our liking, were sail
ing the lower St. Lawrence in q snug two
masted schooner of so tons burthen. the
clean and clipper-like Sophie, manned by
four sturdy French fishermen of La Fleur
de Lis harbor, headed directly for tiny
purple cleft between stupendous headlands,
which our captain, good Monsieur Des-
champs. told us was the entrance to deep
and silent harbor of the grewsome Labrador
shore.
A LONELY LAND.
Labrador proper is that almost unknown
land of unparalleled sterility and loneli-
ness lying between the Gulf of st. Law
renee, the Atlantic Ocean and that we'll
nigh limit]ess inland sea, Hudson's Bay
That portion known to men is the part, or
the sea-line part, we had set forth to look
upon. It properly consists of two grand
coastwise divisions. The waters of the first
flow from desolats solitudes into the St.
Lawrence and gulf, along the immeasura-
BILE county of Saguenay, in the Province of
Quebec, while those of the other seek the
Atlantic to the north of Belle Isle Straits,
along the grandest but most forbidding
shores of any land, to where Greenland is
but days journey ahead of favoring gales
On the one hand, all along this frightful
coast, from the lofty rocks OF the Saguenay,
which stand like eternal sentinels of the
St. Lawrence, to the bare peaks beyond the
last wretched hut of Hebron, the remotest
of the Moravian missions in North America,
the entire coast line is one interminable
reach and record of human peril and suffer-
ing. of fog. iceberg and tempest, and of
wreck and disaster inconceivable. On the
other hand, behind this rugged coast, there
is but a waste so barren, so mighty in its
immeasurable solitude of rock and stream
and inland sea, SO indescribably ''the land
given to CAIN" as told by JACQUES Cartier
in 1884, that only the imagination can
traverse it to that awful, farthest north
where Silence sits frozen at the feet of God.
LEGENDS OF LABRADOR.
And yet there is more than fancy and le-
gend in the tales our captain told of olden
activities along these shores as we exhilara-
tingly swept these northern waters. Tales
weird and strange they were; but the warm
blood of Basque was in his own veins, and
his eyes kindled with the wondrous his
tories of Basque adventures here 900 years
ago-histories which, could they be proven,
would compel Bancroft and Headley to re-
write all their early pages, and would sadly
dampen the enthusiasm for the proposed
Columbus celebration of 1892.
Briefly this is how the story runs. The
old Iberian race, perhaps a race 200 years
older tnan the Egyptian, which came from
somewhere and overran Europe from the
Mediterranean to the Archangel and Kara
seas, and finally succumbed to other inva-
sions, blendings and assimilations, COM
prised a people not only cultivated in the
arts but those which gave the world its first
and greatest navigators and sea adventurers.
All coasts and climes were known to them.
The concentrated remnant OF this mighty
people gave to the Basque provinces and
Brittany their interesting and spirited folk.
From among these, more than 200 years
before Columbus, assisted by the willy though
niggardly spirit of Spanish conquest and
domination, made the New World subject
i've to the old, were those Iberian, or Basque
navigators, who had seen every rod of coast
line from Nova Zembla beyond the howling
maelstroms of Spitzbergen sea, around the
Arctic Spitzbergen groups, the far Icelandic
forths, past Greenland's 1000 miles of Ice
and silence, the eternal ice peaks of Elles-
mere Land and Cumberland Island, down
beyond the dreary reach of Labrador, all
along the mighty distances of st. Law
rence's gulf and Newfoundland itself, past
Prince Edwards and Cape Breton Islands
and Nova Scotia, to that dread mystery and
graveyard of the sea, Sable Island; where
during all those centuries they had chased
the whale and taken the mackerel and cod.
From such as these, humble and unknown
whalers and sailors, Columbus undoubtedly
gained his positive knowledge of America,
and through it his Immortality and tame.
OFF THE LABRADOR COAST.
Before evening came we were underneath
the shadows of the towering Labrador coast,
close upon the Seven Islands and bay.
These islands are huge rocky peaks rising
precipitously from the gulf to imposing
heights, the Great Boule reaching 700 feet,
a few miles to the south and west of the
Moisie river mouth. The bay behind, in
which we anchored for the night, is fully six
miles long and two broad, and when once
within, the capacIous harbor seems land
locked by the islands and a vast promontory
at its western extremity, the latter reaching
an elevation of 700 feet. Two parallel
ranges of mountains, rocky and dread,
their bases covered by dense growths OF
stunted spruce, rise in dark and undulatlng
silhouettes as if to render impossible the
impenetrable wilderness behind. Sweeping
around eastward toward the Moisie river
is a long, circling, sandy beach, and along
this, in the edge of the stunted spruce be-
hind, were scattered few wild and ragged
of Labrador Indians. All
looked greasy, lifeless, despondent, hope
less.
There was not one picturesque character
istic about them save the queer, puggy.
almond-eyed faces Of the little children, and
an occasional quaint cap of crimson and
black, set upon the heads of the Indian
women, from underneath the edge of which
are puffs Of black and wiry hair matted
down between the eyes and ears. These
people, perhaps 200 in number, and called
the Montagnais, with a few Nasquapees,
are a portion Of tie ragged, starving, fate
whipped remnant of the great Cree branch
of the once noble Algonquin race. Seven
Islands Bay and Moisie have for centuries
are the mission houses, chapel, one of the