A WOMAN EXPLORER.*
FOUR centuries have elapsed since Labrador was first visited by English ships. But even now, if we look at the most modern map of that large corner of Northern America, we find that enormous expanses of it are ominously devoid of any trace of the pioneer. The various reasons for this neglect are given in an excellent introductory chapter to the voluMe before us, very appropriately contributed by Mr. Cabot, a descendant of the great Bristolian explorers. It is cold, barren, appallingly desolate ; an imposing stream of stately northern ice, sometimes two hundred miles wide, makes its way not only down its long eastern coast, but far south to the Newfoundland banks and the latitudes of the Mediter- ranean. "The like of this majestic stream of tall ice does not exist upon the globe ; in the northern .hemisphere there is nothing approaching it." It is in the same zone as London and Paris, yet its cities, beyond the rare trading-station or mission (one cannot forget " the extraordinary establishment of the Deep-Sea Mission, with its hospitals, its co-operative stores, and its hospital ship Stratheona,' which Dr. Wilfred Grenfell himself pilots, and with something like a charmed life navigates the whole intricate coast "), are fishermen's cabins and northern igloos. In the entire interior it is computed that less than a thousand families of Indians now remain, contriving to get a most precarious existence by the chase; and there is no reason to suppose that it contains one single settled resident of pure white race. Terra praecipue • A Woman's Way through Unknown Labrador. By Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard. London; John Mniray. [10s. 6d. net.]
horrenda / Why go there? Kipling in his fine song of the "Explorer" gives the answer:—
" There's no sense in going further—it's the edge of cultiva- tion:
So they said, and I believed it . . .
Till a voice, as bad as C,onsoience, rang interminable changes On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated—So : Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges—
Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go !'"
In 1903 Leonidas Hubbard, an American University graduate and journalist, set out to explore the Nascaupee and George Rivers. John McLean—it is astonishing how many Scottish names are mentioned with commendation in this volume— and Dr. Low had made brave attempts inward with success. Whether it was that Mr. Hubbard lacked " their professional methods," misfortune after misfortune overtook him and his little company. Tley missed the trail for which they were searching, and took the course which carried them into the dreadful Susan Valley. They battled with fortitude against the fate that is never far away from one in uninhabited regions, were forced to retrace their steps—what a blow this must be to ardent spirits—and Mr. Hubbard, in bad health, yet ever nobly meeting all the sterner tests of manhood, died within a few hours' march of safety. In the annals of peril and strenuous adventure few things are destined to hold so cherished a place as the splendid endurance and self-sacrifice of George Elson and Dillon Wallace in their efforts to save the life of their comrade and leader. Mr. Elson tells in this volume the "story of the last days" in the pages at the end, and Mrs. Hubbard acknowledges his loyal devotion in the preface. Mr. Wallace might well have been mentioned too. The writer of this notice has had occasion to read his Lure of the Labrador Wild, a book which from its dedication—" Here, b'y, is the issue of our plighted troth. • Why I am the scribe and not you, God knows : and you have the secret. D. W."—to its last page is a splendid memorial to his departed friend. In blinding snow, shoeless, without food, in tatters and emaciated, he wandered for ten days in search of food and assistance for Mr. Hubbard. Criticism more or less hostile to Mr. Hubbard's equipment and capability for the task seems to have appeared in the American Press and elsewhere, and " by an impulse which does not need explanation" his wife determined to complete his work. This volume contains the diary notes kept by her husband of his own attempt, but its chief interest is in the fascinating story which she has to tell of her own triumph.
Two years after her husband's death she started with her two canoes from Hamilton Inlet. She left North-West Post on June 25th, and by August 27th she arrived in Ungava Bay, having made the pioneer maps of the Nascaupee and George Rivers, that of the Nascaupee showing Seal Lake and Lake Micbikamau to be in the same drainage basin, and what geographers had supposed to be two distinct rivers, the North- West and the Nascaupee, to be one and the same. Mrs. Hubbard has an observant eye, and writes picturesquely of the way- wardness of the magnificent herd of caribou she was lucky enough to meet in the wilds, or of the astonishment of friendly Indians. as she glides up their uncharted lakes or rivers hitherto ungraced by a white woman, or approaches their wigwams and listens to their eager demands for tobacco,—the " be-all 'and end-all" of their existence. Even in barren Labrador, she tells us (p. 208), are to be found little touches that go to prove human nature the same the world over. One of the young men, handsomer than the others, and conscious of the fact, had been watching her at the Nascanpee camp with evident interest. He was not only handsomer than the others, but his leggings were also redder. As she walked up towards the camp, he went a little ahead and to one side, managing to watch for the impression he expected to produce. She turned, and to make sure that his red leggings should not fail of their mission, he put his foot on one of the canoes, pretending, as she passed, to tie his moccasin, the while watching for the effect.
We have no space to deal farther with this book. Suffice it to say that it is one of great interest, not only for its own
story, but also for the fact that its authoress succeeded where her husband failed. Her own personal triumph is not that she has inscribed her name on the roll of illustrious explorers,
but that she has justified her husband's venture and over- thrown irreverent criticism. He, too, in Kipling's words, would have " heard the wide, wide mutterings of unimagined rivers, And beyond the nameless timber seen illimitable plains," had the season he chose not been one of exceptional severity.
The photographs, about fifty in number, are as beautiful as they are rare.
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