Viewing page 18 of 76

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

THE HARTFORD DAILY TIMES, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 26, 1929          17

Thirty Pound Salmon Among Labrador Trophies of George G. Williams Who Sailed on Dr. Grenfell's Boat With MacMillan on Annual Cruise

Farmington Man Tells of Lure of "Land God Gave to Cain," With Focky Fjords, Barren Mountains, and Rivers Teeming With Splendid Fish.

Greatest Salmon Run in His Eleven Years of Visiting Country Reported by Sailor who Criused [[Cruised]] Coast in 40-Foot Boat.

Special to The Hartford Times.
Farmington, Oct. 26.
A few weeks ago, George G. Williams of Farmington, president of the J. B. Williams company of Glastonbury, returned from his eleventh cruise and fishing trip in Labrador waters, with tales of the most prolific run of salmon that he has ever known. After making his way along the rocky and treacherous northern coast line in his forty-foot boat, the "Karluk", he was luckily repaid for the trip.

Mr. Williams' modesty does not allow him to indorse the statement of friends that he is an extraordinary navigator as well as fisherman. He also fails to say that his visits to Labrador are welcomed by the natives of the villages along the coast as the visits of a friend whose yearly calls are anticipated with joy.

Fortunately, he has written his experiences in his own words, and his simple recounting is far more impressive than if given in the form of an interview. He has entitled it "The Lure of the Labrador."

Jacques Cartier, who visited the Labrador coast in 1498, six years after the discovery of America by Columbus, described it as "The land God gave to Cain."

Captain Cartwright, an Englishman who came to Labrador in 1770 and spent many years there, in his wonderfully interesting journal says, "God created that country last of all, and threw together there the refuse of his material as of no use to mankind." Still another writer describes it as "a country formed of frightful mountains, and unfruitful vallies, a prodigious heap of barren rock."

Why, then, should one want to spend a summer in Labrador?

Has Alluring Charm.

I am often asked this question. Granting that it is a wild and barren land, it has a charm that, once experienced, ever lures one back there. To adequately describe its magnificent scenery, its mountains that rise 6,000 feet out of the sea, its remarkable fjords, equaling those of Norway, its unspoiled salmon and trout fishing, the opportunities it offers for exploration, and its life-giving air, would require volumes, and a far readier pen than mine.

That "The Lure of the Labrafor" has been a yowerful one in my own case can be shown by the fact that for eleven summers I have cruised and fished and explored the rivers and bays of its 900 mile coast line from the Straits of Belle Isle to Cape Chidley, its northern extremity, in my own boat, and have not even begun to exhaust its charms.

Usually, I have sailed from New London in June, returning there in October. But in 1928, getting back to Newfoundland quite late, owing to unusually boisterous weather. I left my boat the "Karluk" there for the winter.

Owing to this fact, I was glad to accept an invitation from Sir Wilfred Grenfell to make the voyage as far as Bay of Islands, Newfoundland, last June in his mission boat, "Maraval." "Maraval" is a 78-foot boat, auxiliary ketch, presented to Dr. Grenfell for his Labrador Mission work a year ago and was making her maiden voyage. She was designed with especial reference to hospital work, with accommodations for patients that are picked up at the fishing villages along the coast, an operating room, and so forth.