No crops are grown or ever can be grown. There are no horses,
cattle, poultry, pigs or sheep. Reindeer are said to be coming. But
there are none at present. The only domestic animals are dogs, that howl
like wolves, but never bark. And yet it is a country which is rich, and
might he richer still, in fish and fur, and which seems formed by Nature
to be a perfect paradise of all that is most desirable in the wild life
of the north, especially in the seabirds that are now being done to
death among its countless archipelagoes.
Its natural features are not the only strange things in it. It is a
curiosity of government, or, rather, of the want of government. It is
_in_ the Province of Quebec and _in_ the Dominion; yet, in one sense,
not _of_ either. For it in the only place of its kind inhabited by
educated whites, in any part of the self-governing Empire, where no man
has ever cast a single vote or ever had the right to cast one. The
electoral line stops short at Natashquan, 36 miles west of Kegashka. So
1200 good Canadians have no vote. They are dumb and their two
governments are deaf. They have bought their little holdings from the
Province; and they pay Canadian custom dues to the Dominion, on
everything they get from the Quebec truck traders or the Hudson Bay
posts, in exchange for their fish and fur.
Pages:
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30