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Volume CXXXIII, Number 16 |
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First impressions of Labrador emerge
KATHRYN OSTROFSKY
COLUMNIST
The 90-ton schooner Julia A. Decker continued her northward voyage carrying Professor Leslie Lee and the 19 Bowdoin students and alumni of the Bowdoin College Scientific Expedition to Labrador. Due to fog and lack of wind, the men stopped at Hawkesbury on July 5, 1891, and Professor Lee and Dr. Parker spent the better part of a day measuring the Indians to discern any physiological differences between the North American natives and the Anglo-European descended Americans. Then, at four in the afternoon on Friday, July 10, 1891, two weeks after they left Maine, the Bowdoin boys finally caught their first glimpse of Labrador.
"It was a land of strange inhospitality," wrote Austin Cary (Bowdoin 1887), "as we first saw it, it was through the mists which almost continually hide it in early summer, and the figures gathered in the bows and rigging of our vessel were muffled up in winter clothing."
Their first stop was Red Bay, a fishing hamlet where the doctor saw many patients, mostly victims of "la grippe" (the flu). Then the Bowdoin men zigzagged around rocky islands and anchored in several bays on their way up the Labrador coast. At each stop, the boys conducted scientific research, including collecting birds; dredging things up from the ocean floor; and archaeological research, for example digging up an eighteenth-century French Arcadian fort.
And also at each stop, the mosquitoes and black flies were so thick that they posed not just a nuisance, but actually a threat to the adventurers. "One of our party," Rupert Baxter noted, "suffered so seriously from the effects of their attacks that he was confined to his bed for nearly a week, meanwhile hardly being able to move."
Between bays and inlets, the crew navigated the Straight of Belle Isle, which runs between Newfoundland to the south and Labrador to the north. Here the ship passed several icebergs, one of which became a target of the boys' rifles. They succeeded in knocking off the berg's corner, which put the whole thing off balance and "consequently the whole mass was overturned" with great noise and commotion.
Parker wrote of a port of call, St. Frances Harbor, that was much more hospitable than their earlier impressions of Labrador. "Immediately upon entering this harbor," he wrote, "surrounded by high and beautiful hills, we found a great change in the atmosphere. It seemed as though we were again enjoying the balmy breeze of Maine." But farther north, Webeck Harbor, was pronounced "wayback" by the crew, because "it seemed such a long way back to anything worthy of human interest."
Yet they went northward from there to Hopedale, where Professor Lee wrote of his experiences. Their northernmost port of call, Hopedale was a mission that served about 200 Eskimos and also the site of an archaeological excavation of the pre-historic village "Avatoke," meaning "may we have seals." Eskimos, he noted, spent summers on outer islands so they could catch cod and seals and winters at the heads of bays, "where the cold weather is less severe" and where hunting and trapping is profitable. "Fishing is the only business possible in summer," Austin Cary lectured the American Geographical Society, and "keeping alive is a full occupation for the winter months."
At first the language and cultural barriers made communication difficult between the Mainers and the Labradoreans. For example, they offended an Eskimo man by asking him to make them boots. He replied, "Ho, women's work. I no do such work."
Lee wrote, "after we became acquainted with them it went much easier. In fact we made some very good friends with them, and when we parted, several of them gave presents to me and others in the party." The boys then traded with the natives to acquire items for Bowdoin as well as for their own personal collections.
In addition to archaeological findings, they also contributed to Bowdoin's collections a vast array of specimens, and they contributed to the scientific community lists of species until that time never recorded in Labrador. They expanded the known flora and fauna of Labrador, and their 95 ornithological specimens representing 32 species included black guillemot, razor-billed auk, spotted sandpiper, Eskimo curlew, willow ptarmigan, great horned owl, pine grosbeak, and savanna sparrow, some of which are still used to teach ornithology at Bowdoin.
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