out of it,” said “Bill” Norwood—one of the volunteer “wops” building the Battle Harbour reservoir. “The meat in winter comes to them in frozen hunks, and they slide it down at one gulp, to melt in their stomach. That’s not quite my idea of enjoying a meal.” In a yawl that the _Strathcona_ dragged astern three plaintive huskies, to be committed to the pack at St. Anthony, hungrily sniffed the meat-laden breeze that blew from our deck. They were perturbed at finding themselves going to sea. I may add that when they got ashore the youngest of the three—a mere baby—jumped on a rock and bit the nose of the leader of the St. Anthony pack, Eric by name, thereby winning respect for himself and his two comrades among the aborigines who might otherwise have fallen upon them and rent them limb from limb. The dogs at Battle Harbour live up to the name of the settlement. Like all other “huskies,” they are ready to fight on slight provocation, and the night is made vocal with their long-drawn ululations. Their appetite is insatiable—they devour with enthusiasm whatsoever things are thrown out at the kitchen door—they even ate a towel that went astray—and when nothing better offers they will wade into the water in quest of caplin, or cods’ heads. In their enthusiasm for food the dogs will dig through boards to get at cattle and pigs, and cows and chickens seldom live where the dogs are numerous. The murderous proclivities of the dogs of the Labrador furnished one of the chief reasons, as has been said before, why the Doctor went to such great pains and to such a relatively large expense to import and domicile the reindeer. “It was wildly exciting work, I can tell you, lassoing those reindeer and tying their legs in that country over yonder,” he said, as the _Strathcona_ rounded the rugged bread-loaf island of Cape Onion. He pointed to the settlement of Island Bay behind it. “There we were blown across the bay on the ice—dogs, komatik and all—roaring with laughter at our own predicament, helpless before the great gale of wind.” Thus he recalls without bitterness the costly undertaking whose fruition has been—and still is—one of his dearest dreams. Conveying the captured reindeer across the Strait in a schooner to Canada with almost nobody to help him was a Herculean task. Some day the Legislature at St. John’s may see fit to divert a little money to establishing the docile and reliable reindeer in place of treacherous and predatory dogs. It is a greater loss to the island than to Grenfell that the scheme must wait.