The interior of Labrador has long held the well-deserved reputation of being one of the most inhospitable places on earth. It is a patchwork of Canadian shield granites and sphagnum moss, labyrinthine caribou trails and desolate subarctic barrens, all set against glacier-scoured hills stretching to an apparently limitless horizon. In the late spring of 1903, Leonidas Hubbard, a young writer, and Dillon Wallace, a forty-year-old New York attorney, set off with a native guide, George Elson, with no firsthand knowledge of their destination, to explore the Lake Michikamau region of the interior of Labrador. Unfortunately they paddled past their intended route, the Naskaupi River, and headed up the treacherous Susan River instead. When in early September they finally glimpsed the vast waters of Michikamau from the top of an unknown mountain, Labrador's cold winds had begun. With scant scraps of food remaining, the three began a desperate struggle against starvation and the rapidly approaching and unforgiving winter as they raced home for their lives.