The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1889-08-07
USELESS AND PEOPLELESS.
LABRADOR AND ITS IRREGULARITIES.
Mr.. Wakeman's Experience In n Sterile
and Lonely Ciime-The Basque Navi-
Eators-Labrador Indians-oIofsIs
MissiOns-The Mingan Islands.

ness and desOlatiOn guarding the gulf Of
Newfoundland. between Newfoundland
aRd Labrador, just after the light swept
past US from the east and the sea, and,
sailing all day within sight of those north
eTn massive walls whose vast escarp-
ments 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 peoples portion of Amer
lea, Labrador, prompted an impulse to at
least skim it's edges in a still more
leisurely form Of lettering and pilgrim
age An English tourist was easily per-
suaded in joining me IN plan for brief
northern adventure; and, debarking at
Rimouski. we came upon a veteran YAM
kee lumberman with the fever of exPlora-
ton strong on him, and in less than twen-
ty-four hours. having found many happen
ings to our liking, were sailing the lower
ST. Lawrence in a snug, two-masted
schooner of eighty 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 head
lands, which our captain, good Monsieur
Deschamps. tod US was the entrance to a
deep and silent harbor OF the grewsome
Labrador shore.
Labrador proper isthat almost unknown
land of unparalleled sterility and loneli-
ness lying between the gulf of st. Law
renee. the Atlantic ocean and that well
nigh limitless inland sea, Hudson's bay
That portion known to men is the part, or
she sea-line part, We had set forth to look
upon. II properly consists of two grand
ooastvise divisions. The waters of the
first flows from desOlate solitudes into the
St Lawrence and gulf. along the i'm
measurable county eff Saguenav, 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 a days journey
ahead Of favoring gales. On the one hand,
all along this frightful coast. from the lofty
rocks OF the Sagueuav which stand like
eternal seDtinels of the It. 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
suffering of fog iceberg and tempest, and
OF wreck and disaster inConceivabe. On
the other hand, behind this rugged coast
there Is but 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 i'm
agination can traverse it to that awful,
farthest north, where silence sits frozen
at the feet OF God.
And vet there is more than fancy and
legend in the tales our captain told of
olden activities along these shores as we
exhilaratinQly 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 wondTous histories Of Basque
adventures here one thousand years ago
histories which could they be proven
would compel Bancroft and Headlev TO
rewrite all their early pages, and would
sadly dampen the enthusiasm for the pro-
posed Columbus celebration of 1892
Briefly this is how the story runs.
The old Iberisn race, perhaps a race
one thousand years older than the
Egyptian, which came from somewhere
and overran Europe from the Mediterra-
mean to the ATcliangel and Kara seas, and
finally succumbed TO other invasiOns,
blendings and assimilations, comprised a
people not Jnlv cultivated in the arts. but
those which gave the world its first and
greatest navigators and sea adventures.
All coasts and climes were known 10
them. The concentrated remnant of this
mighty people gave to the Basque prov
1Dces and Brittany their interesting and
spirited folk. From among these, more
than one thousand years before Columbus,
assisted by the willy though niggardly
spirit OF Spanish conquest and domination,
made the new word subjective to the old,
we're those Iberian, or Basque navigators,
who had seen every rod of coast
line from Nova Zembla beyond the
bowling maelstroms OF Spitzbergen sea
around the artic Spitzbergen groups, the
far Icelandic fiOrths, past Greenland's
1900 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
distance OF St. Lawrence's gulf and New
foundland itself, past Prince Edwards
and Cape Breton islands and Nova Scotia,
70 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
whaiers and sailors, Columbus undoubt-
edly gained his positive knowledge OF
America, and through il his Immortality of
fame This these bronzed old fell
lows like our captain have some
way of knowing and believing; and
IN proof Of their faith they will cite
the curious fact that. underneath all the
present sanity nomenclature of every
portion OF the Gulf of 81. Lawrence, of the
entire Labrador coast, and in TACT of all
the northeast American coast, are names
of old Basque forts, Basque harbors,
Basque coyes, capes and headlands,
Basque blubber-boiing and fsh-curing
stations and an endless variety of Basque
names of things and places, that were far
older than American civilization now is
when that civilization was begun. And
they Will further recall in sup
port of all this, the indubitable
historic fact that when the in
doBatable Jacques Cartier, himself a
Breton, sailed mp the st. Lawrence
in 1884, he found not only the men Of
Basque and Breton before him, wbalers
and fishers OF mackprel and cod, but that
the names Of fish, streams, islands, coves
and promoDtories were az Basque; and
that the ancestors OF these whalers and
sailors had perhaps annually sought these
waters at period so far and remote from