Bowdoin Boys in Labrador

Bowdoin Boys in Labrador

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Prince (Jr.) Cilley
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Title: Bowdoin Boys in Labrador
Author: Jonathan Prince (Jr.) Cilley
Release Date: January 21, 2005 [eBook #14750]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
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BOWDOIN BOYS IN LABRADOR
An Account of the Bowdoin College Scientific Expedition to Labrador
Led by Prof. Leslie A. Lee of the Biological Department
by
JONATHAN PRINCE CILLEY, JR.
Rockland, Maine: Rockland Publishing Company

PREFACE
This letter from the President of Bowdoin College is printed as an
appropriate preface to the pages which follow.
I thank you for the advanced sheets of the "Bowdoin Boys in
Labrador." As Sallust says, "In primis arduum videtur res gestas

scribere; quod facta dictis sunt exaequanda."
In this case, the diction is equal to the deed: the clear and vivacious
style of the writer is fully up to the level of the brilliant achievements
he narrates.
The intrinsic interest of the story, and its connection with the State and
the College ought to secure for it a wide reading.
Very truly yours, WILLIAM DEW. HYDE.

BOWDOIN BOYS IN LABRADOR
ON BOARD THE "JULIA A. DECKER," Port Hawkesbury, Gut of
Canso, July 6th. 1891.
Here the staunch Julia lies at anchor waiting for a change in the wind
and a break in the fog. To-day will be memorable in the annals of the
"Micmac" Indians, for Prof. Lee has spent his enforced leisure in
putting in anthropometric work among them, inducing braves, squaws
and papooses of both sexes to mount the trunk that served as a
measuring block and go through the ordeal of having their height,
standing and sitting, stretch of arms, various diameters of head and
peculiarities of the physiognomy taken down. While he with two
assistants was thus employed, two of our photographic corps were
busily engaged in preserving as many of their odd faces and costumes
as possible, making pictures of their picturesque camp on the side of a
hill sloping toward an arm of the Gut, with its round tent covered with
birch and fir bark, dogs and children, and stacks of logs or wood--from
which they make the strips for their chief products, baskets--cows,
baggage and all the other accompaniments of a comparatively
permanent camp. They go into the woods and make log huts for winter,
but such miserable quarters as these prove to be on closer inspection,
with stoves, dirt and chip floor, bedding and food in close proximity to
the six or eight inhabitants of each hut, suffice them during warm
weather. We found that they elect a chief, who holds the office for life.
The present incumbent lives near by St. Peter's Island, and is about
forty years old. They hold a grand festival in a few weeks somewhere
on the shore of Brasd'Or Lake, at which nearly every Indian on the
Island is expected, some two thousand in all, we are informed, and after
experiencing our good-fellowship at their camp and on board they
invited us one and all to come down, only cautioning us to bring along

a present of whiskey for the chief.
The Gut, in this part at least, is beautiful sailing ground, with bold,
wooded shores, varied by slight coves and valleys with little hamlets at
the shore and fishermen's boats lying off the beach. The lower part we
passed in a fog, so we are ignorant of its appearance as though the Julia
had not carried us within a hundred miles of it, instead of having
knowingly brought us past rock and shoal to this quiet cove, under the
red rays of the light on Hawkesbury Point, and opposite Port Mulgrave,
with which Hawkesbury is connected by a little two-sailed,
double-ended ferry-boat built on a somewhat famous model. It seems
that a boat builder of this place, who, by the way, launched a pretty
little yacht to-day, sent a fishing boat, whose model and rig was the
product of many years' experience as a fisherman, to the London
Fisheries' Exhibit of a few years past, and received first medal from
among seven thousand five hundred competitors. The Prince of Wales
was so pleased with the boat, which was exhibited under full sail with a
wax fisherman at the helm, that he purchased it and has since used it.
Later, when the United States fish commission schooner