[Illustration:  MAP OF CANADA]

Newfoundland is separated from the mainland of LABRADOR on the north by the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Cape Breton Island on the south by Cabot Strait.  Labrador is an immense region on the continent, where the coast (except for the deep inlet of Melville Lake) soon rises into an elevated plateau 2000 feet in height, which is strewn with almost uncountable lakes, out of which rivers flow north, south, east, and west.  On the north-east corner of Labrador there are mountains from 3000 to 4000 feet, overlooking the sea.  The whole of this vast Labrador or Ungava Peninsula, which is bounded on the south by the River and Gulf of St. Lawrence, and on the north by Hudson’s Bay and Hudson’s Straits, is an inhospitable land, at no time with much population.

“The winter of Labrador is long and severe; one would need to have blood like brandy, a skin of brass, and an eye of glass not to suffer from the rigours of a Labrador winter.  In the summer the frequent fogs render the air damp, and the constant breezes from the immense fields of ice floating in the gulf keep the land very cool, and make any alteration in the winter dress almost unnecessary” (James M’Kenzie).  Labrador and the lands farther north on the continent of North America are separated from Greenland on the east by the broad straits—­a great branch of the Atlantic—­named after Davis and Baffin, who first explored them.  Passing up Davis Strait, along the coast of Labrador to beyond 60 deg.  N. lat., the voyager comes to Hudson’s Straits, which, if followed up first to the northwards and then to the south-west, would lead him into the great expanse of Hudson’s Bay, one of the most important features in the geography of North America.

HUDSON’S BAY, which is a great inland sea with an area of about 315,000 square miles, has a southern loop or extension called James Bay, the shores of which are not at a very great distance either from Lake Superior to the south-west, or from the source of the River Saguenay on the south.  The Saguenay flows into the Lower St. Lawrence River.  It is therefore not surprising that as soon as the French began to settle in Lower Canada they heard of a vast northern inland sea of salt water—­Hudson’s Bay.  But the people who discovered and surveyed Hudson’s Bay during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries were always on the search for a passage out of its waters into the Arctic Sea, which would enable them to get right round America into the Pacific Ocean.

In Arctic North America Nature really seems to have been preparing during millions of years a grim joke with which to baffle exploring humanity!  It is easy enough to pass from Davis Straits into Hudson’s Bay, but to get out of Hudson’s Bay in the direction of the Arctic Ocean is like getting out of a very cleverly arranged maze.  There are innumerable false exits, which have disappointed one Arctic explorer after another.  When they had discovered that Hudson’s