e Tuesday 10 AM, August 18
We are only just now leaving the Mingan Islands out of sight having made
a distance of about 35 miles in 26 hours. The weather has been very cold and
the wind has blown steadily dead ahead. Those discomforts continue although
slightly abated. Our only female passenger has suffered more of seasickness
than she has complained of, for ourselves as two men, habituated like the
Esquimaux and feeding on food almost as gross as theirs continue to keep
warm and well.
But let us give the weather a truce, content to leave it its privileges
insomuch as it was we who sought the colder regions not the cold regions
that pursued us.
A word about the topography, Labrador bounds Canada on the East
at a point 36 miles North of the Seven Islands. It is quite uninhabited
except by the Hudson Bay Company’s agents (who trade with the natives

for furs and oil) and by the natives themselves, the natives count of two nations
first those of the Western regions of Labrador Known as the [ montainas ]
Indians of whom I have described several families left by us at
Mingan – and secondly the Esquimaux. These two nations are strangers
but not unfriendly to each other. They commence in their wandering the whole
of the continent East and North of Canada extending so far as the waters of
Hudson Bay, they live no where but rove continually. I am satisfied
from what I have seen of the One nation ^& read of the other^ that although strangers speaking
different languages they are in fact one people. They are harmless super
stitious peaceful and industrious people and ^in^ their modes of living approximate
to each other. What a singular Christian Church is that at Mingan. a
church on the beach with its altar chapels pictures crosses vestments
and burying ground and its congregation scattered over a square of 500 miles
in bark tenements assembling once a year to receive the sacraments, and
and never meeting otherwise. It was a pleasing sight to see their leader ring his
tinkling little bell on the plain and see all the inhabitants of the tents report
directly to church twice a day for prayers said by themselves. It was hardly
less so to see the whole party (yesterday) consisting of seven families throw
themselves into boats and rush to the several islands to gather as chance
may offer cranberries for our table or young puffin (a species of sea pigeons which
are reared in holes in the earth such as swallows dwell in – or seals
to supply the civilized families of the earth with oil and furs. and to converse
with them we learn from them that they of all the races of men the poorest
and the most wretched in the allotment of Providence do not suffer either
want or cold or hunger. They claim that they all are all temperance men &
they wear badges of membership of the cold water societies.
Anticosti occupies a central position off the Coast of Labra
dor and Nova Scotia in the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It is an island forty
miles wide and 120 miles miles long. Generally low and with very little
of wood or grass upon it. it its surrounded by shoals which render it

dangerous of approach by navigators. while it has no inhabitants except a few
agents kept there to lend assistance in cases of shipwrecks. It seems to be
the only safe place for the ^wild^ animals of this region. Nor are its waters less
a secure retreat for whales. We have passed quite down along its
Western coast this morning & so near as to see it very distinctly. I should
think that the whales like the sunshine. Their spouts as they are called
was so frequent that it seemed as if there were a large arrangement of
fountains. One of them of mountain size played on the surface of the
water just off from the side of our ship. The Pilot reports that two
together crossed in the night just under the bowsprit− a few feet further
back they would have lifted us out of the sea and broken our staunch
schooner across their backs. The Pilot confesses that he was much
terrified