“The Lily Joyce stuck in the ice, So did the Husky too; Captain Bill Ryan left Terry behin’ To paddle his own canoe.” Another runs thus: “’Twas on the 29th of June, As all may know the same; The wind did blow most wonderful, All in a flurry came.” This was written and sung to a hymn tune. Song is a common accompaniment of a shipboard task: “Haul on the bow-line, Kitty is me darlin’; Haul on the bow-line, Haul, boys, haul.” If a boy doesn’t go across the Straits before he is sixteen, he must be “shaved by Neptune.” It is almost a disgrace not to have gone to the Labrador. Neptune is called “Nipkin.” “Nipkin’ll be aboard to shave you tonight.” When they are cleaning fish, the last man to wash a fish for the season gets ducked in the tub. Some of the older residents are walking epitomes of the island lore. They know a great deal that never found lodgment in books. Matty Mitchell, the 63-year old Micmac guide, now a prospector for the Reid-Newfoundland Company, was a fellow-passenger on the mail-boat. He was full of tales of the days when the wolf still roamed the island’s inner fastnesses. I asked him when the last of which he knew were at large. He said: “About thirty years ago I saw three on Doctor’s Hill. I have seen none since. There are still lots of bears and many lynxes. Once I was attacked by six wolves. I waited till the nearest was close to me—then I shoved my muzzle-loader into his mouth and shot him and the other five fell away. Another time I was attacked by three bears who drove me into a lake where I had to stay till some men who had been with me came to the rescue. “My grandfather was with Peyton when Mary March and another Indian woman were captured at Indian Lake. Mary March died at St. John’s, and was buried there; the other one was brought back to the shore of the lake.” “How do you know what minerals you are finding when you are prospecting?” I asked. “I was three times in the Museum at St. John’s,” he answered. “I see everything in the place. That way I know everything that I look at when I go to hunt for minerals and metals. I hear a thing once—I got it. I see a thing once—I got it. I never found gold—but I got pearls from clams, weighing as much as forty grains. I can’t stay in the house. I must be out in the open. If I stay inside I get sick. I take colds. I’ve been twice to the Grand Falls in Labrador. At the upper falls the river rises seven times so”—he arched the back of his hand—“before the water goes over. The biggest flies I ever saw are there. They bite right through the clothes. You close the tent—sew up the opening. You burn up all the flies inside. Next morning there are just as many.”