It is the sea that dooms Labrador, and the relation of the coast to this does much to determine its fertility, or rather its barrenness. Half way across the ocean, in latitude 54 deg., Captain Linklater found the temperature of the water 54 deg., Fahrenheit; near the Labrador coast, in the same latitude, the temperature was but 34 deg., two degrees only above the freezing point! It is in facts like this that one gets a key to the climate not only of Labrador, but of Eastern North America. Out of the eternal ice of the North the current presses down along the coast, chilling land and air wherever it touches. Where the coast retreats somewhat, and is well barricaded with islands, the rigor of the climate is mitigated; where it lies fully exposed to the Arctic current, even though much farther south, the life is utterly chilled out of it. Now Hopedale lies behind a rampart of islands twenty miles deep; while the portion of the Arctic current which splits off at the head of Newfoundland, and pushes down through the strait, presses close past Caribou Island. This explains the sterility of the latter. The Arctic current varies much in different years, not only in the amount of ice it brings, but also in its direction. Unexpected effects depend upon this variation. It will be remembered that in 1863 several ships were wrecked on Cape Race, owing to some "unaccountable" disturbance of the currents. The Gulf Stream, it was found at length, ran thirty miles farther north than usual. _Was_ this unaccountable? When Captain Handy, our whaling Mentor, was penetrating Hudson's Strait in June, 1863, he found vast headlands of floe ice resting against the land, and pushing far out to sea. "Mr. Bailey," said he to his mate, "there will be many wrecks on Cape Race this year." The prediction was fulfilled. Do you see why it should be? The floe ice rose ten feet above the water; it therefore extended near one hundred feet beneath. At this depth it acted upon the current precisely as if it were land, pushing the former far to the east. The current, therefore, did not meet and repel the Gulf Stream at the usual point; and the latter was thus at liberty to press on beyond its custom to the north. Captain Handy not only saw the facts before him, but reasoned upon them. Even when these immense bodies of ice do not rest upon the land, they produce the same effect. At the depth of a hundred feet they go below the current into the still water or counter current beneath, and thus still resist the surface flow.