abrupt rise of the land from the coast these rivers and streams are
very swift and are filled with a constant succession of falls and
rapids; consequently, their navigation in canoes--the only possible
way, generally speaking, to navigate them--is most difficult and
dangerous. In this, to a large extent, lies the explanation as to
why only a few daring white men have ever penetrated to the
interior plateau; the condition of the rivers, if nothing else,
makes it impossible to transport sufficient food to sustain a party
for any considerable period, and it is absolutely necessary to run
the risk of obtaining supplies from a country that may be plentiful
with game one year and destitute of it the next, and in which the
vegetation is the scantiest.

The western part of the peninsula, although it, too, contains vast
tracts in which no white man has set foot, is somewhat better known
than the eastern, most of the rivers that flow into Hudson and
James Bays having been explored and correctly mapped. Hubbard's
objective was the eastern and northern part of the peninsula, and
it is with this section that we shall hereafter deal. Such parts
of this territory as might be called settled lie in the region of
Hamilton Inlet and along the coast.

Hamilton Inlet is an arm of the Atlantic extending inland about one
hundred and fifty miles in a southwesterly direction. At its
entrance, which is two hundred miles north of Cape Charles, the
inlet is some forty miles wide. Fifty miles inland from the
settlement of Indian Harbour (which is situated on one of the White
Bear Islands, near the north coast of the inlet at its entrance),
is the Rigolet Post of the Hudson's Bay Company--the "Old Company,"
as its agents love to call it--and here the inlet narrows down to a