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With the Harmony to Labrador - Notes of a Visit to the Moravian Mission Stations on the North-East - Coast of Labrador by Benjamin la Trobe
page 54 of 95 (56%)
rest two women are standing in the water and pushing manfully. Their
position and occupation illustrate the utility of their national
female costume of trousers and boots. Skirts would be impracticable
when they go out boating and fishing with their husbands or trudge
through the deep snow, which lies on the ground more than half a year.
Nevertheless they look odd to an unaccustomed eye. The children are
comical miniatures of their fathers and mothers, and sometimes it is
difficult to tell whether they are boys or girls.

Do you see the station boat lying a little way from the end of the
pier? She is named the "Kitty," and has an interesting history. Many
years ago she brought to Okak the five survivors of the ship "Kitty"
lost in the ice of Hudson's Bay. The captain and ten men escaped in
the larger boat, but fell into the hands of heathen Eskimoes, who
treacherously murdered them all. Those in the smaller boat rounded
Cape Chudley and were driven by the wind among the islands near Okak.
Here they were seen by Eskimoes belonging to the station. Emaciated
and famished, they feared a cruel death, but to their astonishment the
natives helped them ashore, took them into their little hut of sods,
wrapped them in skins, and supplied them with food. Very beautiful to
those ship-wrecked mariners sounded the singing and very solemn the
prayers at the morning and evening devotions of their Eskimo
deliverers. As soon as the wind permitted, the natives brought them to
the station, where they were carried ashore to this mission-house and
received every attention. They were in a deplorable condition and the
missionaries had to perform some surgical operations on severely
frost-bitten limbs. When recovered, three of them went to the south,
and the other two worked their passage home in the "Harmony."

Here come a number of women and children running to the pier. Several
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