The fact that the two ladies spoke very little English was somewhat of a drawback, but detracted very slightly from our enjoyment of Mrs. Hanson’s delightful singing and none at all from our appreciation of her playing on the piano and organ.  To get such a musical treat in the Labrador wilds was most unexpected and for that reason all the more thoroughly enjoyed.

The mission house is a yellow, barn-like building, heavily built to prevent its being blown away, snugly stowed beneath a hill, and seeming like a mother round which the huts of the Eskimo cluster.  The rooms in which we were so pleasantly entertained were very comfortably and tastily furnished, a grand piano in one of them seeming out of place in a village of Labrador, but so entirely in harmony with its immediate surroundings that we hardly thought of the strangeness of it, within a few yards of a village of pure Eskimo, living in all their primitive customs and in their own land.

A few rods behind the mission are the gardens, cut up into small squares by strong board fences to prevent the soil from blowing away, each with a tarpaulin near by to spread over it at night.  In this laborious way potatoes, cabbages and turnips are raised.  In a large hothouse the missionaries raise tomatoes, lettuce, and also flowers, but for everything else, except fish, game and ice, they have to depend on the yearly visit of the Moravian mission ship.  She left for Nain just the day before we reached Hopedale, and after unloading supplies, etc., there, she proceeds north, collecting furs and fish until loaded, and then goes to London.

About fifty Eskimos were measured and collections made of their clothing, implements of war and chase and household utensils, which are the best of our collections, for the World’s Fair and the Bowdoin museums.

After spending these five pleasant and profitable days at Hopedale, and regretfully looking out by Cape Harrigan, to Nain, whose gardens are the seventh wonder of Labrador, through which, reports say, one can walk for two miles, and whose missionaries, warned of our coming, were making ready to give us a warm reception; and near it Paul’s Island, on which was so much of interest to our party; all this we thought of mournfully as our vessel’s head was pointed southward and we sped along, reluctant on this account, and yet eager to hear of the success of our boldest undertaking, the Grand River exploration party.

At Aillik, where there is an abandoned Hudson Bay Co.’s post, we measured a few more Eskimo, obtained a kyak, which a day or two later nearly became a coffin to one of our party, and tried a trout stream that proved the best we found in Labrador.  In about an hour, three of our party caught over eighty magnificent trout, and, naturally, returned much elated.

The next day we poked the Julia’s inquisitive nose into one or two so-called but misnamed harbors that afforded very little shelter, and had a threatening and deserted look which, although the characteristic of the Labrador shore in general, has never been noticeable in the harbors we have visited.  Many of them are very small, and in some it is necessary to lay quite close to the rocks, but yet we have had no trouble from the extremely deep water that we were told we should have to anchor in, nor yet from getting into harbors so small that it was hard to get out of them.