L A B L A B 175 for securing employers from the frauds of workmen employed in various trades in working up materials, not only as regards the misappropriation of property entrusted to them, but also in relation to fraudulent contrivances for misrepresenting the amount of work done. For such offences fine or imprisonment may be inflicted.
Apart from the legislation already mentioned, there are a great number of Acts of parliament directly or indirectly affecting labour. The general direction of all such legisla tion is to ameliorate the condition of workmen.
The legislation regulating the hours of labour of young persons, originating in the benevolent exertions of the earl of Shaftesbury, and extended by Lord Aberdare as secretary of state for the home department and others, is most im portant (see FACTORY ACTS). The indirect effects of those provisions in causing better order in the conduct of manufacturing industries cannot be overlooked. The Agricultural Gangs Act 1867, arising out of the practice in the east of England of persons known as gang masters hiring children, young persons, and women, with a view to contracting with farmers and others for agricultural work is a recent illustration of the direct objects of such legisla tion. The fencing of machinery, the careful working of coal and metalliferous mines, and the like, have been the subject of minute legislative provisions, which, as well as the Explosives Act 1875, intimately affect the wellbeing of the labouring community and the general safety.
The wants of servants are considered in the preference shown to claims for wages in the case of death and bankruptcy, and the general need of all classes of workmen is kept in view in the provisions relating to workmen's dwellings, and the obligation of railway companies to afford facilities for their conveyance at a low rate. Less directly they are considered in the legislation relating to friendly and provident societies; of equivocal effect was the legislation respecting small loans, intended to facilitate the purchase of tools, but taken advantage of to form loan societies of doubtful general benefit to the community. We cannot notice here the effect of the laws regulating the land and sea forces on contracts relating to labour by persons entering the army or navy. (J. E. D.)
LABRADOR, in the widest acceptation of the word, is the peninsular portion of North America bounded on three sides by the Gulf of St Lawrence, the North Atlantic, Hudson's Straits, and Hudson's Bay, and vaguely defined towards the south-west by Rupert's river, the Mistassini river, and the Bersiamits river. It extends from about 49° to 63° N. lat., and from the 55th to the 79th meridian. Its greatest length from the Straits of Belle Isle, which separate it from Newfoundland, to Cape Wolstenholme, its most northern extremity, is 1100 miles; its greatest breadth is about 700 miles. The area is approximately 420,000 square miles, equal to the united areas of the British Isles, France, and Prussia. As a permanent abode of civilized man, Labrador is on the whole one of the most uninviting regions on the face of the earth. The Atlantic coast is the edge of a vast solitude of rocky hills, split and blasted by frosts and beaten by the waves. A vast table-land, in one region 2240 feet above the sea-level, occupies much of the interior. This plateau, says Professor Hind, "is pre-eminently sterile, and, where the country is not burned, caribou moss covers the rocks, with stunted spruce, birch, and aspen in the hollows and deep ravines. The whole of the table-land is strewed with an infinite number of boulders, sometimes three and four deep; these singular erratics are perched on the summit of every mountain and hill, often on the edges of cliffs, and they vary in size from 1 foot to 20 feet in diameter. Language fails to paint the awful desolation of the table-land of the Labrador peninsula."
The interior of Labrador has been but very partially explored, and even the course of the main rivers is largely matter of conjecture. The largest is probably the Ashwanipi or Hamilton river, which rises in the rear of the Seven Islands, drains a portion of the vast table-land, and falls into Hamilton Inlet, on the Atlantic coast. At its mouth it is nearly a mile and a half in width. One hundred miles from its mouth are the great falls and rapids which extend over 20 miles, and involve fifteen portages. The valley of this river is well wooded, some of the trees, which are chiefly spruce, white birch, and poplar, being of considerable size, and tracts of loamy soil being found at intervals along its banks. The Kenamou and the Nasquapee or North-West river also fall into Hamilton Inlet. The Eagle river, the West and East rivers, all famous for salmon and trout, discharge their waters into Sandwich Bay. Of the rivers falling into Ungava Bay the largest is Koksoak or South river, which is 3 miles wide at its mouth, and has its source in Lake Kaniapuscaw, 70 miles long and 20 broad, which occupies the very centre of the peninsula, being equidistant from the St Lawrence, Ungava, and Hamilton Inlet, and 350 miles from each. George's river and Whale river also fall into Ungava Bay. The aspect of the country drained by these rivers is forbidding in the extreme, bleak and barren rocks, with a few stunted trees at the mouths of the rivers or around the lakes, being the most marked features. In a few sheltered spots, however, on the margins of the rivers, timber of fair size is to be found. The rivers discharging into Hudson's Bay are Rupert's river, East Main, and Great and Little Whale rivers. The Moisie river, 250 miles in length, the Mingan, and the Ounaneme fall into the Gulf of St Lawrence. The St Augustine falls into a fine bay of the same name, and has its source in the lakes and marshes of the table-land. The country through which these rivers flow is rugged and mountainous, swamps and innumerable lakes occupying the lower grounds.
By far the most important portion of Labrador is the Atlantic seaboard. The coast itself is rugged, but is deeply indented with bays and inlets, and has many fine harbours. The scenery is grand and impressive. Dark and yellow headlands towering over the waters are ever in sight, some grim and naked, others clad in the pale green of mosses and dwarf shrubbery. With miles on miles of rocky precipices alternate lengthened sea slopes, tame and monotonous, or fantastic and picturesque in form, with stony vales winding alway among the blue hills of the interior. Battle Harbour at the northern extremity of the straits of Belle Isle, is a busy fishing settlement with a narrow sheltered roadstead about half a mile in length between Battle Islands and Great Caribou Island. The water is of great depth in this neighbourhood, and is noted for its wonderful ground swell, which at times rolls in without wind from the eastward into St Lewis Sound, "bursting," as Admiral Bayfield describes it, "with fury over islets 30 feet high, or send ing sheets of foam and spray sparkling in the sunbeams 50 feet up the sides of precipices." By far the greatest of the numerous inlets which indent the coast is Eskimo Bay or Ivuktoke or Hamilton Inlet, 250 miles north of the straits of Belle Isle. This inlet is 30 miles wide at the entrance, but at Port Rigolette, 50 miles from the sea, it narrows to a mile. On both sides of these narrows hills tower to the height of 1000 feet, wooded with spruce from base to summit. At the termination of this gorge the inlet again expands and forms Lake Melville, 30 miles in length and 20 in breadth. After narrowing again it forms another lake (Goose Bay) 7 miles wide and 20 long, and at its extremity the head of the great inlet is reached, 150 miles from the sea. The scenery along the shores of Hamilton Inlet is wild and rugged, and above Rigolette
