Though our route is in no sense
a populated one, there is a steady trickle of traffic this way
along. We met Hudson Bay furriers out of the Great Preserve,
hurrying to make their departure from Bonavista with sable and
black fox for the insatiable markets. We overcossed Keewatin
liners, small and cramped; but their captains, who see no land
between Trepassy and Lanco, know what gold they bring back from
West Erica. Trans-Asiatic Directs we met, soberly ringing the
world round the Fiftieth Meridian at an honest seventy knots; and
white-painted Ackroyd & Hunt fruiters out of the south fled
beneath us, their ventilated hulls whistling like Chinese kites.
Their market is in the North among the northern sanatoria where
you can smell their grape-fruit and bananas across the cold
snows. Argentine beef boats we sighted too, of enormous capacity
and unlovely outline. They, too, feed the northern health
stations in icebound ports where submersibles dare not rise.
Yellow-bellied ore-flats and Ungava petrol-tanks punted down
leisurely out of the north, like strings of unfrightened wild
duck.
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