Johnstown weekly Democrat. (Johnstown, Cambria County, Pa.) 1889-1916, 1889-09-13
THE LAND OF SILENcn,.
L4RR4DOR AHD ITS MOST WONDhH-
FUL HISTORY.

An Almost unknown Land Where ster-
iIity and Loneliness Reign Supreme.
its Two Divisions-The story OF she
Old IberinD Race OF Famed "avi"
gators.
Labrador proper, writes Edgar Wake
man in the Chicago "lnter-Ocean, II
that almost unknown land OF unparalleled
s:erilIty and loneliness lying between
the Gulf Of st. Lawrence, the Atlantic
ocean and that we'll nigh limitles inland
sea, Hudson's 5 bay That portion known
to nfeEi.Ss the part, OF the sea-line part,
we had set forVb to look upon. IL
properly consists Of two grand coastwise
divisions. Thewaters OF the first flow from
lesolate solitudes into the st, Lawrence
and gulf, along the inmeasurable county
Of SagueI6ay, in the province of Quebec,
while those of the other seek the ATTAIN
tic to tho north of Belle Isle straits,
along the graudest but most forbidding
shores Of any land, to whore Greenland
is but days journey ahead of favoring
gales.
On the one hand all along this fright
'ul coast, from tho lofty rocks OF the
5aguenay, which stand like eternal sem
tinels of the st. Llwrence, to the bare
|
Hebron, the remotest of the Moravian
missions in North America, the entire
.oast-line Is one interminablo reach and
record of human peril and suffering, Of
'og, iceberg and tempest, and Of wreck
md disaster inconccivable
On the other hand, behind this rugged
'oast, there is but a waste SO barren, so
nghty in its immeasurable solitude of
rock and stream and inland sea, so inde-
-cribably "the land given to Cain, as
cid by Jacques Cartier in 1884, that only
he Imagination can traverse it to that
tWful farthest north, where silence sits
rozen at the feet of God
And vet there is moro than fancy and
legend in the tales orr captain told of
olden activities along these shores as we
exhilaratingly swept these northern
waters. Tales weird and strange they
we're; but the warm blood of Basque
wA~ in his own veins and his eyes kin
.Icd with the wondrous histories OF
Basque adventures here 1000 years ago
hist ories which, could they be proven,
you'd compel Bancroft and Headley to
rcwritc all their early pages, and would
sadly dampen the enthusiasm for the
noposed Columbus celebration of 1892
| Briefly this Is how the story runs:
The old Iberian race-perhaps rae q
800 years older than the Egyptian
| which camo from somewhere and over
| ran Europe from the Mediterranean To
| The Archangel and Kara seas, and finally
succumbed to other invasions, blendings
| and assimilations-com a people
not only cultivated in the arts, but those
| which gave the world its first and great
est 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
| 900 years before Columbus, assisted by
the willy though niggardly spirit of Span
| ish conquest and domination, made the
new world subjective to the old, We're
hose Iberian OF Basque navigators, who
| aad seen every rod of coast line from
| Nova Zembla bey nd the bowling mel
| ,'ioms of Spitzbergcn sea, around the
! arc;ic Spitzhergen groups, the far Ice
landic iiorihs, past Greenland's 1000
miles of ice and silence, the eternal ice
peaks of Ellesmere Land and Cumber.
land island, down beyond the dreary
| reach Of Labrador, all along the mighty
| distances of st. Lawrences 5 gulf and
Newfoundland itself, pasi Prince Ed.
warts and Cape Breton islands G:.d
Nova scotia, to that dread mystery aac
| graveyard of tho sea, sable island, wher,
! during all tlese centuries they had
| chased the whale and taken the mackera.
and cod. From such as these, humble
and unknown whalers and sailors, Col
umbus undoubtedly gained his positive
| knowledge of America, and through =
hi- Immortality OF fame.