York, and when the shades of evening fell we had built a lean-to of
boughs to shelter us from the storm. Now that we had eaten our
supper of bread and bacon, washed down with tea, we lay before our
roaring campfire, luxuriating in its glow and warmth.

Hubbard's question was put to me so abruptly that it rather
startled me.

"Labrador!" I exclaimed. "Now where in the world is Labrador?"

Of course I knew it was somewhere in the north-eastern part of the
continent; but so many years had passed since I laid away my old
school geography that its exact situation had escaped my memory,
and the only other knowledge I had retained of the country was a
confused sense of its being a sort of Arctic wilderness. Hubbard
proceeded to enlighten me, by tracing with his pencil, on the fly-
leaf of his notebook, an outline map of the peninsula.

"Very interesting," I commented. "But why do you wish to go there?"

"Man," he replied, "don't you realise it's about the only part of
the continent that hasn't been explored? As a matter of fact,
there isn't much more known of the interior of Labrador now than
when Cabot discovered the coast more than four hundred years ago."
He jumped up to throw more wood on the fire. "Think of it,
Wallace!" he went on, "A great unknown land right near home, as
wild and primitive to-day as it has always been! I want to see it.
I want to get into a really wild country and have some of the
experiences of the old fellows who explored and opened up the
country where we are now."