treated by them as any of us, although he belonged to the country, and
I overheard him swearing at a lively gait soon after the little beasts
began their attacks.

"Why, Duncan," said I, "I didn't know you swore."

"I does, sir, sometimes--when things makes me," he replied.

"But it doesn't help matters any to swear, does it?"

"No, sir, but" (swatting his face) "damn the flies--it's easin' to the
feelin's to swear sometimes."

On several occasions after this I heard Duncan "easin' his feelin's"
in long and astounding bursts of profane eloquence, but he did try to
moderate his language when I was within earshot. Once I asked him:

"Where in the world did you learn to swear like that, Duncan?"

"At the lumber camps, sir," he replied.

In the year I had spent in Labrador I had never before heard a planter
or native of Groswater Bay swear. But this explained it. The
lumbermen from "civilization" were educating them.

At one o'clock on July first, half our outfit was portaged to the
summit of the hill and we ate our dinner there in the broiling sun,
for we were above the trees, which ended some distance below us. It
was fearfully hot--a dead, suffocating heat--with not a breath of wind
to relieve the stifling atmosphere, and some one asked what the