Jacques Cartier said Labrador was "the land God gave to Cain," and that there was "not one cartload of earth on the whole of it." Along the coast are mountains rising to 7,000 or even 8,000 feet. There are many lakes inland, 50 to 100 miles in length. Hamilton Inlet is 150 miles long, and from two to 30 miles wide. The Hamilton River which empties into it, in twelve miles descends 760 feet, with a single drop of 350 feet at the Grand Falls, the greatest in North America, surpassing even Niagara. [Illustration: LABRADOR] The population is about 14,500 in more than half a million square miles. There are some 3,500 Indians, 2,000 Eskimos, and 9,000 whites (along the coast and at the Hudson's Bay posts). It was to such a "parish" that Grenfell came in 1892, that he might give the fishermen the benefit of his surgical knowledge and practical experience acquired not only on the land but aboard the tossing ships in the North Sea. A ninety-ton boat is a tiny craft in which to make the voyage across the Atlantic. Grenfell must have known just how Columbus felt, four hundred years ago, when he said to the sailors of his tiny caravels "Sail on! sail on!" First there were head winds for eleven days. "Wonder if the wind's ever goin' to quit blowin' against us!" muttered a sailor, as he coiled a rope to make a bed for a dog in the stern. "I'm about fed up with this kind o' thing." The man to whom he spoke was in his bare feet, washing the deck with the hose. "What does anybody ever wanna go to Labrador for, anyhow?" he grumbled back. "It's a lot better in the North Sea. More sociable. You get letters from home an' tobacco regular. An' you can see somebody once in a while." "Shore leave's no good to a fellow in Labrador," the first man went on, as he watched the dog turn round and round before lying down. "Ain't no place to go. No movies nor nuthin', just fish an' rocks an' people lookin' thin an' half-starved." "You ever been there?" "No, but I was talkin' with fellows that got shipwrecked there once. Gee whiz, what's that?" "That? That's an iceberg. Didn't you ever see an iceberg before?" "No. Looks like a ship under full sail, don't she?" To the north out of the grey mist on the water loomed a mountain of ice. "Glad we didn't run into the old thing," the dog's friend went on. "They say what you see stickin' out o' the water's only a small part of it." "Yes, that's right. 'Bout six-sevenths is under water. Lemme tell you, the fellers that sail a schooner like this up to the fishin' grounds have gotta know what they're about. Ever hear about the _Queen_ an' how she got wrecked?" "No." "Well, it was a fog like it is over yonder, an' the _Queen_ was off Gull Island, close to Cape St. John. She didn't know where she was. They didn't have no lighthouse in them days.