pure forest air, laden with the smell of the fir tree; who have dipped
your paddle into untamed waters, or climbed mountains, with the
knowledge that none but the red man has been there before you; or
have, perchance, had to fight the wilds and nature for your very
existence; you of the wilderness brotherhood can understand how the
fever of exploration gets into one's blood and draws one back again to
the forests and the barrens in spite of resolutions to "go no more."

It was more than this, however, that lured me back to Labrador. There
was the vision of dear old Hubbard as I so often saw him during our
struggle through that rugged northland wilderness, wasted in form and
ragged in dress, but always hopeful and eager, his undying spirit and
indomitable will focused in his words to me, and I can still see him
as he looked when he said them:

"The work must be done, Wallace, and if one of us falls before it is
completed the other must finish it."

I went back to Labrador to do the work he had undertaken, but which he
was not permitted to accomplish. His exhortation appealed to me as a
command from my leader--a call to duty.

Hubbard had planned to penetrate the Labrador peninsula from Groswater
Bay, following the old northern trail of the Mountaineer Indians from
Northwest River Post of the Hudson's Bay Company, situated on
Groswater Bay, one hundred and forty miles inland from the eastern
coast, to Lake Michikamau, thence through the lake and northward over
the divide, where he hoped to locate the headwaters of the George
River.