VI—FAITH and DUTY

“SET SAIL FROM GREAT YARMOUTH HARBOR FOR LABRADOR”

The immediate inspiration of this work was the sermon preached in East London by D. L. Moody. Later in life—indeed, soon before the great evangelist’s death—Dr. Grenfell thanked him for that sermon. “And what have you been doing since?” was Mr. Moody’s prompt and searching question. “What have you been doing since?” Dr. Grenfell might with propriety and effect have placed in Mr. Moody’s hands such letters as those which I reprint, saying: “What have I been doing since? I have been kept busy, sir, responding to such calls as these.” Such calls as these:

Docter plase I whant to see you. Doeher sir have you got a leg if you have Will you plase send him Down Praps he may fet and you would oblig.Reverance dr. Grandfell. Dear sir we are expecting you hup and we would like for you to come so quick as you can for my dater is very sick with a very large sore under her left harm we emenangin that the old is two enchis deep and tow enches wide plase com as quick as you can to save life I remains yours truely.Docker,—Please wel you send me somting for the pain in my feet and what you proismed to send my little boy. Docker I am almost cripple, it is up my hips, I can hardly walk. This is my housban is gaining you this note fromTo Dr. GransfieldDear honrabel Sir,I would wish to ask you Sir, if you would Be pleased to give me and my wife a littel poor close. I was going in the Bay to cut some wood. But I am all amost blind and cant Do much so if you would spear me some Sir I should Be very thankfull to you Sir.I got Bad splotches all over my Body and i dont know what the cause of it is. Please Have you got anything for it. i Have’nt got any money to Pay you now for anything But i wont forget to Pay you when i gets the money.doctor—i have a compleant i ham weak with wind on the chest, weaknes all all over me up in my harm.Dear Dr. Grenfell.I would like for you to Have time to come Down to my House Before you leaves to go to St. Anthony. My little Girl is very Bad. it seems all in Her neck. Cant Ply her Neck forward if do she nearly goes in the fits, i dont know what it is the matter with Her myself. But if you see Her you would know what the matter with Her. Please send a Word By the Bearer what gives you this note and let me know where you will have time to come down to my House. i lives down the Bay a Place called Berry Head.

Docter plase I whant to see you. Doeher sir have you got a leg if you have Will you plase send him Down Praps he may fet and you would oblig.

Reverance dr. Grandfell. Dear sir we are expecting you hup and we would like for you to come so quick as you can for my dater is very sick with a very large sore under her left harm we emenangin that the old is two enchis deep and tow enches wide plase com as quick as you can to save life I remains yours truely.

Docker,—Please wel you send me somting for the pain in my feet and what you proismed to send my little boy. Docker I am almost cripple, it is up my hips, I can hardly walk. This is my housban is gaining you this note from

To Dr. GransfieldDear honrabel Sir,I would wish to ask you Sir, if you would Be pleased to give me and my wife a littel poor close. I was going in the Bay to cut some wood. But I am all amost blind and cant Do much so if you would spear me some Sir I should Be very thankfull to you Sir.

I got Bad splotches all over my Body and i dont know what the cause of it is. Please Have you got anything for it. i Have’nt got any money to Pay you now for anything But i wont forget to Pay you when i gets the money.

doctor—i have a compleant i ham weak with wind on the chest, weaknes all all over me up in my harm.

Dear Dr. Grenfell.I would like for you to Have time to come Down to my House Before you leaves to go to St. Anthony. My little Girl is very Bad. it seems all in Her neck. Cant Ply her Neck forward if do she nearly goes in the fits, i dont know what it is the matter with Her myself. But if you see Her you would know what the matter with Her. Please send a Word By the Bearer what gives you this note and let me know where you will have time to come down to my House. i lives down the Bay a Place called Berry Head.

“What have you been doing since?” Dr. Grenfell has not been idle. There is now a mission hospital at St. Anthony, near the extreme northeast point of the Newfoundland coast. There is another, well-equipped and commodious, at Battle Harbour—a rocky island lying out from the Labrador coast near the Strait of Belle Isle—which is open the year round; when the writer was last on the coast, it was in charge of Dr. Cluny McPherson, a courageous young physician, Newfoundland-born, who went six hundred miles up the coast by dog-team in the dead of winter, finding shelter where he might, curing whom he could—everywhere seeking out those who needed him, caring not a whit, it appears, for the peril and hardship of the long white road. There is a third at Indian Harbour, half-way up the coast, which is open through the fishing season. It is conducted with the care and precision of a London hospital—admirably kept, well-ordered, efficient. The physician in charge is Dr. George H. Simpson—a wiry, keen, brave little Englishman, who goes about in an open boat, whatever the distance, whatever the weather; he is a man of splendid courage and sympathy: the fishing-folk love him for his kind heart and for the courage with which he responds to their every call. There is also the little hospital steamerStrathcona, in which Dr. Grenfell makes the round of all the coast, from the time of the break-up until the fall gales have driven the fishing-schooners home to harbour.

“APPEARED WITH A LITTLE STEAM-LAUNCH, THE PRINCESS MAY”

When Dr. Grenfell first appeared on the coast, I am told, the folk thought him a madman of some benign description. He knew nothing of the reefs, the tides, the currents, cared nothing, apparently, for the winds; he sailed with the confidence and reckless courage of a Labrador skipper. Fearing at times to trust his schooner in unknown waters, he went about in a whale-boat, and so hard did he drive her that he wore her out in a single season. She was capsized with all hands, once driven out to sea, many times nearly swamped, once blown on the rocks; never before was a boat put to such tasks on that coast, and at the end of it she was wrecked beyond repair. Next season he appeared with a little steam-launch, thePrincess May—her beam was eight feet!—in which he not only journeyed from St. Johns to Labrador, to the astonishment of the whole colony, but sailed the length of that bitter coast, passing into the gulf and safely out again, and pushing to the very farthest settlements in the north. Late in the fall, upon, the return journey to St. Johns in stormy weather, she was reported lost, and many a skipper, I suppose, wondered that she had lived so long; but she weathered a gale that bothered the mail-boat, and triumphantly made St. Johns, after as adventurous a voyage, no doubt, as ever a boat of her measure survived.

“Sure,” said a skipper, “I don’t know how she done it. The Lord,” he added, piously, “must kape an eye on that man.”

There is a new proverb on the coast. The folk say, when a great wind blows, “This’ll bring Grenfell!” Often it does. He is impatient of delay, fretted by inaction; a gale is the wind for him—a wind to take him swiftly towards the place ahead. Had he been a weakling, he would long ago have died on the coast; had he been a coward, a multitude of terrors would long ago have driven him to a life ashore; had he been anything but a true man and tender, indeed, he would long ago have retreated under the suspicion and laughter of the folk. But he has outsailed the Labrador skippers—out-dared them—done deeds of courage under their very eyes that they would shiver to contemplate,—never in a foolhardy spirit; always with the object of kindly service. So he has the heart and willing hand of every honest man on the Labrador—and of none more than of the men of his crew, who take the chances with him; they are wholly devoted.

One of his engineers, for example, once developed the unhappy habit of knocking the cook down.

“You must keep your temper,” said the doctor. “This won’t do, you know.”

But there came an unfortunate day when, being out of temper, the engineer again knocked the cook down.

“This is positively disgraceful!” said the doctor. “I can’t keep a quarrelsome fellow aboard the mission-ship. Remember that, if you will, when next you feel tempted to strike the cook.”

The engineer protested that he would never again lay hands on the cook, whatever the provocation. But again he lost his temper, and down went the poor cook, flat on his back.

“I’ll discharge you,” said the doctor, angrily, “at the end of the cruise!”

The engineer pleaded for another chance. He was denied. From day to day he renewed his plea, but to no purpose, and at last the crew came to the conclusion that something really ought to be done for the engineer, who was visibly fretting himself thin.

“Very well,” said the doctor to the engineer; “I’ll make this agreement with you. If ever again you knock down the cook, I’ll put you ashore at the first land we come to, and you may get back to St. Johns as best you can.”

It was a hard alternative. The doctor is not a man to give or take when the bargain has been struck; the engineer knew that he would surely go ashore somewhere on that desolate coast, whether the land was a barren island or a frequented harbour, if ever again the cook tempted him beyond endurance.

“I’ll stand by it, sir,” he said, nevertheless; “for I don’t want to leave you.”

In the course of time thePrincess Maywas wrecked or worn out. Then came theJulia Sheridan, thirty-five feet long, which the mission doctor bought while she yet lay under water from her last wreck; he raised her, refitted her with what money he had, and pursued his venturesome and beneficent career, until she, too, got beyond so hard a service. Many a gale she weathered, off “the worst coast in the world”—often, indeed, in thick, wild weather, the doctor himself thought the little craft would go down; but she is now happily superannuated, carrying the mail in the quieter waters of Hamilton Inlet. Next came theSir Donald—a stout ship, which in turn disappeared, crushed in the ice. TheStrathcona, with a hospital amidships, is now doing duty; and she will continue to go up and down the coast, in and out of the inlets, until she in her turn finds the ice and the wind and the rocks too much for her.

“’Tis bound t’ come, soon or late,” said a cautious friend of the mission. “He drives her too hard. He’ve a right t’ do what he likes with his own life, I s’pose, but he’ve a call t’ remember that the crew has folks t’ home.”

But the mission doctor is not inconsiderate; he is in a hurry—the coast is long, the season short, the need such as to wring a man’s heart. Every new day holds an opportunity for doing a good deed—not if he dawdles in the harbours when a gale is abroad, but only if he passes swiftly from place to place, with a brave heart meeting the dangers as they come. He is the only doctor to visit the Labrador shore of the Gulf, the Strait shore of Newfoundland, the populous east coast of the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, the only doctor known to the Esquimaux and poor “liveyeres” of the northern coast of Labrador, the only doctor most of the “liveyeres” and green-fish catchers of the middle coast can reach, save the hospital physician at Indian Harbour. He has a round of three thousand miles to make. It is no wonder that he “drives” the little steamer—even at full steam, with all sail spread (as I have known him to do), when the fog is thick and the sea is spread with great bergs.

“I’m in a hurry,” he said, with an impatient sigh. “The season’s late. We must get along.”

We fell in with him at Red Ray in the Strait, in the thick of a heavy gale from the northeast. The wind had blown for two days; the sea was running high, and still fast rising; the schooners were huddled in the harbours, with all anchors out, many of them hanging on for dear life, though they lay in shelter. The sturdy little coastal boat, with four times the strength of theStrathcona, had made hard work of it that day—there was a time when she but held her own off a lee shore in the teeth of the big wind.

It was drawing on towards night when the doctor came aboard for a surgeon from Boston, a specialist, for whom he had been waiting.

“I see you’ve steam up,” said the captain of the coastal boat. “I hope you’re not going out inthis, doctor!”

“I have some patients at the Battle Harbour Hospital, waiting for our good friend from Boston,” said the doctor, briskly. “I’m in a hurry. Oh, yes, I’m going out!”

“For God’s sake, don’t!” said the captain earnestly.

The doctor’s eye chanced to fall on the gentleman from Boston, who was bending over his bag—a fine, fearless fellow, whom the prospect of putting out in that chip of a steamer would not have perturbed, though the doctor may then not have known it. At any rate, as though bethinking himself of something half forgotten, he changed his mind of a sudden.

“Oh, very well,” he said. “I’ll wait until the gale blows out.”

He managed to wait a day—no longer; and the wind was still wild, the sea higher than ever; there was ice in the road, and the fog was dense. Then out he went into the thick of it. He bumped an iceberg, scraped a rock, fairly smothered the steamer with broken water; and at midnight—the most marvellous feat of all—he crept into Battle Harbour through a narrow, difficult passage, and dropped anchor off the mission wharf.

Doubtless he enjoyed the experience while it lasted—and promptly forgot it, as being commonplace. I have heard of him, caught in the night in a winter’s gale of wind and snow, threading a tumultuous, reef-strewn sea, his skipper at the wheel, himself on the bowsprit, guiding the ship by the flash and roar of breakers, while the sea tumbled over him. If the chance passenger who told me the story is to be believed, upon that trying occasion the doctor had the “time of his life.”

“All that man wanted,” I told the doctor subsequently, “was, as he says, ‘to bore a hole in the bottom of the ship and crawl out.’”

“Why!” exclaimed the doctor, with a laugh of surprise. “He wasn’tfrightened, was he?”

“THE HOSPITAL SHIP, STRATHCONA”

Fear of the sea is quite incomprehensible to this man. The passenger was very much frightened; he vowed never to sail with “that devil” again. But the doctor is very far from being a dare-devil; though he is, to be sure, a man altogether unafraid; it seems to me that his heart can never have known the throb of fear. Perhaps that is in part because he has a blessed lack of imagination, in part, perhaps, because he has a body as sound as ever God gave to a man, and has used it as a man should; but it is chiefly because of his simple and splendid faith that he is an instrument in God’s hands—God’s to do with as He will, as he would say. His faith is exceptional, I am sure—childlike, steady, overmastering, and withal, if I may so characterize it, healthy. It takes something such as the faith he has to move a man to run a little steamer at full speed in the fog when there is ice on every hand. It is hardly credible, but quite true, and short of the truth: neither wind nor ice nor fog, nor all combined, can keep theStrathconain harbour when there comes a call for help from beyond. The doctor clambers cheerfully out on the bowsprit and keeps both eyes open. “As the Lord wills,” says he, “whether for wreck or service. I am about His business.”

It is a sublime expression of the old faith.

Doctor Grenfell’s patients are of three classes. There is first the “liveyere”—the inhabitant of the Labrador coast—the most ignorant and wretched of them all. There is the Newfoundland “outporter”—the small fisherman of the remoter coast, who must depend wholly upon his hook and line for subsistence. There is the Labradorman—the Newfoundland fisherman of the better class, who fishes the Labrador coast in the summer season and returns to his home port when the snow begins to fly in the fall. Some description of these three classes is here offered, that the reader may understand the character and condition of the folk among whom Dr. Grenfell labours.

“As a permanent abode of civilized man,” it is written in a very learned if somewhat old-fashioned work, “Labrador is, on the whole, one of the most uninviting spots on the face of the earth.” That is putting it altogether too delicately; there should be no qualification; the place is a brutal desolation. The weather has scoured the coast—a thousand miles of it—as clean as an old bone: it is utterly sterile, save for a tuft or two of hardy grass and wide patches of crisp moss; bare gray rocks, low in the south, towering and craggy in the north, everywhere blasted by frost, lie in billowy hills between the froth and clammy mist of the sea and the starved forest at the edge of the inland wilderness. The interior is forbidding; few explorers have essayed adventure there; but the Indians—an expiring tribe—and trappers who have caught sight of the “height of land” say that it is for the most part a vast table-land, barren, strewn with enormous boulders, scarce in game, swarming with flies, with vegetation surviving only in the hollows and ravines—a sullen, forsaken waste.

Those who dwell on the coast are called “liveyeres” because they say, “Oh, ay, zur, I lives yere!” in answer to the question. These are not to be confounded with the Newfoundland fishermen who sail the Labrador seas in the fishing season—an adventurous, thrifty folk, bright-eyed, hearty in laughter—twenty-five thousand hale men and boys, with many a wife and maid, who come and return again. Less than four thousand poor folk have on the long coast the “permanent abode” of which the learned work speaks—much less, I should think, from the Strait of Belle Isle to Cape Chidley. It is an evil fate to be born there: the Newfoundlanders who went north from their better country, the Hudson Bay Company’s servants who took wives from the natives, all the chance comers who procrastinated their escape, desperately wronged their posterity; the saving circumstance is the very isolation of the dwelling-place—no man knows, no man reallyknows, that elsewhere the earth is kinder to her children and fairer far than the wind-swept, barren coast to which he is used. They live content, bearing many children, in inclemency, in squalor, and, from time to time, in uttermost poverty—such poverty as clothes a child in a trouser leg and feeds babies and strong men alike on nothing but flour and water. They were born there: that is where they came from; that is why they live there.

“’Tis a short feast and a long famine,” said a northern “liveyere,” quite cheerfully; to him it was just a commonplace fact of life.

There are degrees of wretchedness: a frame cottage is the habitation of the rich and great where the poor live in turf huts; and the poor subsist on roots and a paste of flour and water when the rich feast on salt junk. The folk who live near the Strait of Belle Isle and on the gulf shore may be in happier circumstances. To be sure, they know the pinch of famine; but some—the really well-to-do—are clear of the over-shadowing dread of it. The “liveyeres” of the north dwell in huts, in lonely coves of the bays, remote even from neighbours as ill-cased as themselves; there they live and laugh and love and suffer and die and bury their dead—alone. To the south, however, there are little settlements in the more sheltered harbours—the largest of not more than a hundred souls—where there is a degree of prosperity and of comfort; potatoes are a luxury, but the flour-barrel is always full, the pork-barrel not always empty, and there are raisins in the duff on feast-days; moreover, there are stoves in the whitewashed houses (the northern “liveyere’s” stove is more often than not a flat rock), beds to sleep in, muslin curtains in the little windows, and a flower, it may be, sprouting desperately in a red pot on the sill. That is the extreme of luxury—rare to be met with; and it is at all times open to dissolution by famine.

“Sure, zur,lastwinter,” a stout young fellow boasted, “we had all the grease us wanted!”

It is related of a thrifty settler named Olliver, however, who lived with his wife and five children at Big Bight,—he was a man of superior qualities, as the event makes manifest,—that, having come close to the pass of starvation at the end of a long winter, he set out afoot over the hills to seek relief from his nearest neighbour, forty miles away. But there was no relief to be had; the good neighbour had already given away all that he dared spare, and something more. Twelve miles farther on he was again denied; it is said that the second neighbour mutely pointed to his flour-barrel and his family—which was quite sufficient for Olliver, who thereupon departed to a third house, where his fortune was no better. Perceiving then that he must depend upon the store of food in his own house, which was insufficient to support the lives of all, he returned home, sent his wife and eldest son and eldest daughter away on a pretext, despatched his three youngest children with an axe, and shot himself. As he had foreseen, wife, daughter, and son survived until the “break-up” brought food within their reach; and the son was a well-grown boy, and made a capable head of the house thereafter.

“THE LABRADOR ‘LIVEYERE’”

The “liveyere” is a fisherman and trapper. In the summer he catches cod; in the winter he traps the fox, otter, mink, lynx, and marten, and sometimes he shoots a bear, white or black, and kills a wolf. The “planter,” who advances the salt to cure the fish, takes the catch at the end of the season, giving in exchange provisions at an incredible profit; the Hudson Bay Company takes the fur, giving in exchange provisions at an even larger profit; for obvious reasons, both aim (there are exceptions, of course) to keep the “liveyere” in debt—which is not by any means a difficult matter, for the “liveyere” is both shiftless and (what is more to the point) illiterate. So it comes about that what he may have to eat and wear depends upon the will of the “planter” and of the company; and when for his ill-luck or his ill-will both cast him off—which sometimes happens—he looks starvation in the very face. A silver fox, of good fur and acceptable colour, is the “liveyere’s” great catch; no doubt his most ecstatic nightmare has to do with finding one fast in his trap; but when, “more by chance than good conduct,” as they say, he has that heavenly fortune (the event is of the rarest), the company pays sixty or eighty dollars for that which it sells abroad for $600. Of late, however, the free-traders seem to have established a footing on the coast; their stay may not be long, but for the moment, at any rate, the “liveyere” may dispose of his fur to greater advantage—if he dare.

The earth yields the “liveyere” nothing but berries, which are abundant, and, in midsummer, “turnip tops”; and as numerous dogs are needed for winter travelling—wolfish creatures, savage, big, famished—no domestic animals can be kept. There was once a man who somehow managed for a season to possess a pig and a sheep; he marooned his dogs on an island half a mile off the coast; unhappily, however, there blew an off-shore wind in the night, and next morning neither the pig nor the sheep was to be found; the dogs were engaged in innocent diversions on the island, but there was evidence sufficient on their persons, so to speak, to convict them of the depredation in any court of justice. There are no cows on the coast, no goats,—consequently no additional milk-supply for babies,—who manage from the beginning, however, to thrive on bread and salt beef, if put to the necessity. There are no pigs—there is one pig, I believe,—no sheep, no chickens; and the first horses to be taken to the sawmill on Hamilton Inlet so frightened the natives that they scampered in every direction for their lives whenever the team came near, crying: “Look out! The harses is comin’!” The caribou are too far inland for most of the settlers; but at various seasons (excluding such times as there is no game at all) there are to be had grouse, partridge, geese, eider-duck, puffin, gulls, loon and petrel, bear, arctic hare, and bay seal, which are shot with marvellously long and old guns—some of them ancient flintlocks.

Notwithstanding all, the folk are large and hardy—capable of withstanding cruel hardship and deprivation.

In summer-time the weather is blistering hot inland; and on the coast it is more often than not wet, foggy, blustering—bitter enough for the man from the south, who shivers as he goes about. Innumerable icebergs drift southward, scraping the coast as they go, and patches of snow lie in the hollows of the coast hills—midway between Battle Harbour and Cape Chidley there is a low headland called Snowy Point because the snow forever lies upon it. But warm, sunny days are to be counted upon in August—days when the sea is quiet, the sky deep blue, the rocks bathed in yellow sunlight, the air clear and bracing; at such times it is good to lie on the high heads and look away out to sea, dreaming the while. In winter, storm and intense cold make most of the coast uninhabitable; the “liveyeres” retire up the bays and rivers, bag and baggage, not only to escape the winds and bitter cold, but to be nearer the supply of game and fire-wood. They live in little “tilts”—log huts of one large square room, with “bunks” at each end for the women-folk, and a “cockloft” above for the men and lads. It is very cold; frost forms on the walls, icicles under the “bunks”; the thermometer frequently falls to fifty degrees below zero, which, as you may be sure, is exceedingly cold near the sea. Nor can a man do much heavy work in the woods, for the perspiration freezes under his clothing. Impoverished families have no stoves—merely an arrangement of flat stones, with an opening in the roof for the escape of the smoke, with which they are quite content if only they have enough flour to make hard bread for all.

It goes without saying that there is neither butcher, baker, nor candlestick-maker on the coast. Every man is his own bootmaker, tailor, and what not; there is not a trade or profession practiced anywhere. There is no resident doctor, save the mission doctors, one of whom is established at Battle Harbour, and with a dog-team makes a toilsome journey up the coast in the dead of winter, relieving whom he can. There is no public building, no municipal government, no road. There is no lawyer, no constable; and I very much doubt that there is a parson regularly stationed among the whites beyond Battle Harbour, with the exception of the Moravian missionaries. They are scarce enough, at any rate, for the folk in a certain practical way to feel the hardship of their absence. Dr. Grenfell tells of landing late one night in a lonely harbour where three “couples wanted marrying.” They had waited many years for the opportunity. It chanced that the doctor was entertaining a minister on the cruise; so one couple determined at once to return to the ship with him. “The minister,” says the doctor, “decided that pronouncing the banns might be dispensed with in this case. He went ahead with the ceremony, for the couple had three children already!”

The “liveyere” is of a sombrely religious turn of mind—his creed as harsh and gloomy as the land he lives in; he is superstitious as a savage as well, and an incorrigible fatalist, all of which is not hard to account for: he is forever in the midst of vast space and silence, face to face with dread and mysterious forces, and in conflict with wind and sea and the changing season, which are irresistible and indifferent.

Jared was young, lusty, light-hearted; but he lived in the fear and dread of hell. I had known that for two days.

“The flies, zur,” said he to the sportsman, whose hospitality I was enjoying, “was wonderful bad the day.”

We were twelve miles inland, fishing a small stream; and we were now in the “tilt,” at the end of the day, safe from the swarming, vicious black-flies.

“Yes,” the sportsman replied, emphatically. “I’ve suffered the tortures of the damned this day!”

Jared burst into a roar of laughter—as sudden and violent as a thunderclap.

“What you laughing at?” the sportsman demanded, as he tenderly stroked his swollen neck.

“Tartures o’ the damned!” Jared gasped. “Sure, ifthat’sall ’tis, I’ll jack ’asy about it!”

He laughed louder—reckless levity; but I knew that deep in his heart he would be infinitely relieved could he believe—could he only make sure—that the punishment of the wicked was no worse than an eternity of fighting with poisonous insects.

“Ay,” he repeated, ruefully, “if that’s all ’twas, ’twould not trouble me much.”

The graveyard at Battle Harbour is in a sheltered hollow near the sea. It is a green spot—the one, perhaps, on the island—and they have enclosed it with a high board fence. Men have fished from that harbour for a hundred years and more—but there are not many graves; why, I do not know. The crumbling stones, the weather-beaten boards, the sprawling ill-worded inscriptions, are all, in their way, eloquent:

“Sarah Combe died the fourth of August, 1881,aged 31 years.”

There is another, better carved, somewhat better spelled, but quite as interesting and luminous:

InMemory of JohnHill who DiedDecember 30 1890Aged 34

These things are, indeed, eloquent—of ignorance, of poverty; but no less eloquent of sorrow and of love. The Labrador “liveyere” is kin with the whole wide world.

In the early spring—when the sunlight is yellow and the warm winds blow and the melting snow drips over the cliffs and runs in little rivulets from the barren hills—in the thousand harbours of Newfoundland the great fleet is made ready for the long adventure upon the Labrador coast. The rocks echo the noise of hammer and saw and mallet and the song and shout of the workers. The new schooners—building the winter long at the harbour side—are hurried to completion. The old craft—the weather-beaten, ragged old craft, which, it may be, have dodged the reefs and out-lived the gales of forty seasons—are fitted with new spars, patched with new canvas and rope, calked anew, daubed anew and, thus refitted, float brave enough on the quiet harbour water. There is no end to the bustle of labour on ships and nets—no end to the clatter of planning. From the skipper of the ten-tonFirst Venture, who sails with a crew of sons bred for the purpose, to the powerful dealer who supplies on shares a fleet of seventeen fore-and-afters manned from the harbours of a great bay, there is hope in the hearts of all. Whatever the last season, every man is to make a good “voyage” now. This season—thisseason—there is to be fish a-plenty on the Labrador!

The future is bright as the new spring days. Aunt Matilda is to have a bonnet with feathers—when Skipper Thomas gets home from the Labrador. Little Johnny Tatt, he of the crooked back, is to know again the virtue of Pike’s Pain Compound, at a dollar a bottle, warranted to cure—when daddy gets home from the Labrador. Skipper Bill’s Lizzie, plump, blushing, merry-eyed, is to wed Jack Lute o’ Burnt Arm—when Jack comes back from the Labrador. Every man’s heart, and, indeed, most men’s fortunes, are in the venture. The man who has nothing has yet the labour of his hands. Be he skipper, there is one to back his skill and honesty; be he hand, there is no lack of berths to choose from. Skippers stand upon their record and schooners upon their reputation; it’s take your choice, for the hands are not too many: the skippers are timid or bold, as God made them; the schooners are lucky or not, as Fate determines. Every man has his chance. John Smith o’ Twillingate provisions theLucky Queenand gives her to the penniless Skipper Jim o’ Yellow Tickle on shares. Old Tom Tatter o’ Salmon Cove, with plea and argument, persuades the Four Arms trader to trust him once again with theBusy Bee. He’ll get the fishthistime. Nar a doubt of it!He’llbe home in August—this year—loaded to the gunwale. God knows who pays the cash when the fish fail! God knows how the folk survive the disappointment! It is a great lottery of hope and fortune.

When, at last, word comes south that the ice is clearing from the coast, the vessels spread their little wings to the first favouring winds; and in a week—two weeks or three—the last of the Labradormen have gone “down north.”

Dr. Grenfell and his workers find much to do among these men and women and children.

At Indian Harbour where theStrathconalay at anchor, I went aboard the schoonerJolly Crew. It was a raw, foggy day, with a fresh northeast gale blowing, and a high sea running outside the harbour. They were splitting fish on deck; the skiff was just in from the trap—she was still wet with spray.

“I sails with me sons an’ gran’sons, zur,” said the skipper, smiling. “Sure, I be a old feller t’ be down the Labrador, isn’t I, zur?”

He did not mean that. He was proud of his age and strength—glad that he was still able “t’ be at the fishin’.”

“AT INDIAN HARBOR”

“’Tis a wonder you’ve lived through it all,” said I.

He laughed. “An’ why, zur?” he asked.

“Many’s the ship wrecked on this coast,” I answered.

“Oh no, zur,” said he; “not so many, zur, as you might think. Down this way, zur,we knows how t’ sail!”

That was a succinct explanation of very much that had puzzled me.

“Ah, well,” said I, “’tis a hard life.”

“Hard?” he asked, doubtfully.

“Yes,” I answered; “’tis a hard life—the fishin’.”

“Oh no, zur,” said he, quietly, looking up from his work. “’Tis just—justlife!”

They do, indeed, know how “t’ sail.” The Newfoundland government, niggardly and utterly independable when the good of the fisherfolk is concerned, of whatever complexion the government may chance to be, but prodigal to an extraordinary degree when individual self-interests are at stake—this is a delicate way of putting an unpleasant truth,—keeps no light burning beyond the Strait of Belle Isle; the best it does, I believe, is to give wrecked seamen free passage home. Under these difficult circumstances, no seamen save Newfoundlanders, who are the most skillful and courageous of all, could sail that coast: and they only because they are born to follow the sea—there is no escape for them—and are bred to sailing from their earliest years.

“What you going to be when you grow up?” I once asked a lad on the far northeast coast.

He looked at me in vast astonishment.

“What you going tobe, what you going todo,” I repeated, “when you grow up?”

Still he did not comprehend. “Eh?” he said.

“What you going to work at,” said I, in desperation, “when you’re a man?”

“Oh, zur,” he answered, understanding at last, “I isn’t clever enough t’ be a parson!”

And so it went without saying that he was to fish for a living! It is no wonder, then, that the skippers of the fleet know “how t’ sail.” The remarkable quality of the sea-captains who come from among them impressively attests the fact—not only their quality as sailors, but as men of spirit and proud courage. There is one—now a captain of a coastal boat on the Newfoundland shore—who takes his steamer into a ticklish harbour of a thick, dark night, when everything is black ahead and roundabout, steering only by the echo of the ship’s whistle! There is another, a confident seaman, a bluff, high-spirited fellow, who was once delayed by bitter winter weather—an inky night, with ice about, the snow flying, the seas heavy with frost, the wind blowing a gale.

“Where have you been?” they asked him, sarcastically, from the head office.

The captain had been on the bridge all night.

“Berry-picking,” was his laconic despatch in reply.

There is another—also the captain of a coastal steamer—who thought it wise to lie in harbour through a stormy night in the early winter.

“What detains you?” came a message from the head office.

“It is not a fit night for a vessel to be at sea,” the captain replied; and thereupon he turned in, believing the matter to be at an end.

The captain had been concerned for his vessel—not for his life; nor yet for his comfort. But the underling at the head office misinterpreted the message.

“What do we pay you for?” he telegraphed.

So the captain took the ship out to sea. Men say that she went out of commission the next day, and that it cost the company a thousand dollars to refit her.

“A dunderhead,” say the folk, “cancotchfish; but it takes amant’ find un.” It is a chase; and, as the coast proverb has it, “the fish have no bells.” It is estimated that there are 7,000 square miles of fishing-banks off the Labrador coast. There will be fish somewhere—not everywhere; not every man will “use his salt” (the schooners go north loaded with salt for curing) or “get his load.” In the beginning—this is when the ice first clears away—there is a race for berths. It takes clever, reckless sailing and alert action to secure the best. I am reminded of a skipper who by hard driving to windward and good luck came first of all to a favourable harbour. It was then night, and his crew was weary, so he put off running out his trap-leader until morning; but in the night the wind changed, and when he awoke at dawn there were two other schooners lying quietly at anchor near by and the berths had been “staked.” When the traps are down, there follows a period of anxious waiting. Where are the fish? There are no telegraph-lines on that coast. The news must be spread by word of mouth. When, at last, it comes, there is a sudden change of plan—a wild rush to the more favoured grounds.

It is in this scramble that many a skipper makes his great mistake. I was talking with a disconsolate young fellow in a northern harbour where the fish were running thick. The schooners were fast loading; but he had no berth, and was doing but poorly with the passing days.

“If I hadn’t—if Ionlyhadn’t—took up me trap when I did,” said he, “I’d been loaded an’ off home. Sure, zur, would you believe it? but I had the berth off the point. Off the point—the berth off the point!” he repeated, earnestly, his eyes wide. “An’, look! I hears they’s a great run o’ fish t’ Cutthroat Tickle. So I up with me trap, for I’d been gettin’ nothin’; an’—an’—would you believe it? but the man that put his down where I took mine up took a hundred quintal[2]out o’ that berth next marnin’! An’ he’ll load,” he groaned, “afore the week’s out!”

“SET THE TRAPS IN THE OPEN SEA”

When the fish are running, the work is mercilessly hard; it is kept up night and day; there is no sleep for man or child, save, it may be, an hour’s slumber where they toil, just before dawn. The schooner lies at anchor in the harbour, safe enough from wind and sea; the rocks, surrounding the basin in which she lies, keep the harbour water placid forever. But the men set the traps in the open sea, somewhere off the heads, or near one of the outlying islands; it may be miles from the anchorage of the schooner. They put out at dawn—before dawn, rather; for they aim to be at the trap just when the light is strong enough for the hauling. When the skiff is loaded, they put back to harbour in haste, throw the fish on deck, split them, salt them, lay them neatly in the hold, and put out to the trap again. I have seen the harbours—then crowded with fishing-craft—fairly ablaze with light at midnight. Torches were flaring on the decks and in the turf hut on the rocks ashore. The night was quiet; there was not a sound from the tired workers; but the flaring lights made known that the wild, bleak, far-away place—a basin in the midst of barren, uninhabited hills—was still astir with the day’s work.

At such times, the toil at the oars, and at the splitting-table[3], whether on deck or in the stages—and the lack of sleep, and the icy winds and cold salt spray—is all bitter cruel to suffer. The Labrador fisherman will not readily admit that he lives a hard life; but if you suggest that when the fish are running it may be somewhat more toilsome than lives lived elsewhere, he will grant you something.

“Oh, ay,” he’ll drawl, “when the fish is runnin’,’tisa bit hard.”

I learned from a child—he was merry, brave, fond of the adventure—that fishing is a pleasant business in the sunny midsummer months; but that when, late in the fall, the skiff puts out to the trap at dawn, it is wise to plunge one’s hands deep in the water before taking the oars, no matter how much it hurts, for one’s wrists are then covered with salt-water sores and one’s palms are cracked, even though one take the precaution of wearing a brass chain—that, oh, yes! it is wise to plunge one’s hands in the cold water, as quick as may be; for thus one may “limber ’em up” before the trap is reached.

“’Tis not hard, now,” said he. “But, oh—oo—oo! when the big nor’easters blow! Oo—oo!” he repeated, with a shrug and a sage shake of the head; “’tis won-der-ful hard those times!”

The return is small. The crews are comprised of from five to ten men, with, occasionally, a sturdy maid for cook, to whom is given thirty dollars for her season’s work; some old hands will sail on no ship with a male cook, for, as one of them said, “Sure, some o’ thim min can’t boil water without burnin’ it!” A good season’s catch is one hundred quintals of dry fish a man. A simple calculation—with some knowledge of certain factors which I need not state—makes it plain that a man must himself catch, as his share of the trap, 30,000 fish if he is to net a living wage. If his return is $250 he is in the happiest fortune—richly rewarded, beyond his dreams, for his summer’s work. One-half of that is sufficient to give any modest man a warm glow of content and pride. Often—it depends largely upon chance and the skill of his skipper—the catch is so poor that he must make the best of twenty-five or thirty dollars. It must not be supposed that the return is always in cash; it is usually in trade, which is quite a different thing—in Newfoundland.

The schooners take many passengers north in the spring. Such are called “freighters” on the coast; they are put ashore at such harbours as they elect, and, for passage for themselves, families, and gear, pay upon the return voyage twenty-five cents for every hundredweight of fish caught. As a matter of course, the vessels are preposterously overcrowded. Dr. Grenfell tells of counting thirty-four men and sixteen women (no mention was made of children) aboard a nineteen-ton schooner, then on the long, rough voyage to the north. The men fish from the coast in small boats just as the more prosperous “green-fish catchers” put out from the schooners. Meantime, they live in mud huts, which are inviting or otherwise, as the women-folk go; some are damp, cave-like, ill-savoured, crowded; others are airy, cozy, the floors spread deep with powdered shell, the whole immaculately kept. When the party is landed, the women sweep out the last of the winter’s snow, the men build great fires on the floors; indeed, the huts are soon ready for occupancy. At best, they are tiny places—much like children’s playhouses. There was once a tall man who did not quite fit the sleeping place assigned to him; but with great good nature he cut a hole in the wall, built a miniature addition for his feet, and slept the summer through at comfortable full length. It is a great outing for the children; they romp on the rocks, toddle over the nearer hills, sleep in the sunshine; but if they are eight years old, as one said—or well grown at five or seven—they must do their little share of work.

Withal, the Labradormen are of a simple, God-fearing, clean-lived, hardy race of men. There was once a woman who made boast of her high connection in England, as women will the wide world over; and when she was questioned concerning the position the boasted relative occupied, replied, “Oh,he’sSuperintendent o’ Foreign Governments!” There was an austere old Christian who on a Sunday morning left his trap—his whole fortune—lie in the path of a destroying iceberg rather than desecrate the Lord’s day by taking it out of the water. Both political parties in Newfoundland shamelessly deceive the credulous fisherfolk; there was a childlike old fellow who, when asked, “And what will you do if thereisno fish?” confidently answered: “Oh, they’s goin’ t’ be a new Gov’ment.He’lltake care o’ we!” There was a sturdy son of the coast who deserted his schooner at sea and swam ashore. But he had mistaken a barren island for the mainland, which was yet far off; and there he lived, without food, for twenty-seven days! When he was picked up, his condition was such as may not be described (the Labrador fly is a vicious insect); he was unconscious, but he survived to fish many another season.

The mail-boat picked up Skipper Thomas of Carbonear—then master of a loaded schooner—at a small harbour near the Straits. His crew carried him aboard; for he was desperately ill, and wanted to die at home, where his children were.

“He’s wonderful bad,” said one of the men. “He’ve consumption.”

“I’m just wantin’ t’ die at home,” he said, again and again. “Just that—just where my children be!”

All hearts were with him in that last struggle—but no man dared hope; for the old skipper had already beaten off death longer than death is wont to wait, and his strength was near spent.

“Were you sick when you sailed for the Labrador in the spring?” they asked him.

“Oh, ay,” said he; “I were terrible bad then.”

“Then why,” they said—“why did you come at all?”

They say he looked up in mild surprise. “I had t’ make me livin’,” he answered, simply.

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