The finest school of courage in the world is the open. The Sands of Dee, the estuary and the hills of Wales made a fine school of this sort for Grenfell.
The out-of-doors clears the brain, and there a man learns to think straight and to the point. When he is on intimate terms with the woods and mountains, and can laugh at howling gales and the wind beating in his face, and can take care of himself and be happy without the effeminating comforts of steam heat and luxurious beds, a man will prove himself no coward when he comes some day face to face with grave danger. He has been trained in a school of courage. He has learned to depend upon himself.
Fine, active games of competition like baseball, football, basketball and boxing, give nerve, self-confidence and poise. Through them the hand learns instinctively, and without a moment's hesitation, to do the thing the brain tells it to do.
Down on The Labrador they say that Grenfell has always been "lucky" in getting out of tight places and bad corners. But we all know, 'waydown in our hearts, that there is no such thing as "luck." "God helps them that help themselves." That's the secret of Grenfell's getting out of such tight corners as this one that he had now run into in the fog. He was trained in the school of courage. He helped himself, and he knew how. He was unafraid.
So it was now as always afterward. Grim danger was threatening thePrincess Mayon every side. Each moment Grenfell and his companions expected to feel the shock of collision and hear the fatal crunching and splintering of the vessel's timbers upon the rocks. All of Grenfell's experiences on the Sands of Dee and in the hills of Wales and out on the estuary came to his rescue. He did not lose his head for a moment. That would have been fatal. He had acquired courage and resourcefulness in that out-of-door school he had attended when a boy. The situation called for all the grit and good judgment he and his crew possessed.
Under just enough steam to give the vessel steerageway, they wound in and out between protruding rocks and miniature islands amidst the white foam of breakers that pounded upon the rocks all around them. At length they were headed about. Then cautiously they threaded their way into the open sea and safety.
This was to be but an incident in the years of labor that lay before Grenfell on The Labrador. He was to have no end of exciting experiences,some of them so thrilling that this one was, in comparison, to fade into insignificance. Labrador is a land of adventures. The man who casts his lot in that bleak country cannot escape them. Adventure lurks in every cove and harbor, on every turn of the trail, ready to spring out upon you and try your mettle, and learn the sort of stuff you are made of.
Later in the evening they again felt their way landward through the fog. To their delight they presently found themselves in a harbor, and that night they rested in a safe and snug anchorage sheltered from wind and pounding sea.
There was adventure enough on that voyage to satisfy anybody. The sun did not set that the voyagers had not experienced at least one good thrill during the daylight hours. On the seventh day from St. Johns thePrincess Maycrossed the Straits of Belle Isle, and drew alongside theAlbertat Battle Harbor.
The new hospital was nearly ready to receive patients, the first of the hospitals to be built as a result of the visit to theAlbertthe previous summer of the ragged man in the rickety boat. The other hospital was in course of building at Indian Harbor, and Doctor Grenfell dispatched theAlbert, with Doctor Curwin and Miss Williams to assist in preparing it for patients, while Doctor Bobart and Miss Cawardine remained in charge of the Battle Harbor hospital.
Away Doctor Grenfell steamed again in thePrincess Maynothing daunted by his many difficulties with the little craft in his voyage from St. John's. It was necessary that he know the headlands and the harbors, the dangerous places and the safe ones along the whole coast. The only way to do this was by visiting them, and the quickest and best way to learn them was by finding them out for himself while navigating his own craft. Now, light houses stand on two or three of the most dangerous points of the coast, but in those days there were none, and there were no correct charts. The mariner had to carry everything in his head, and indeed he must still do so. He must know the eight hundred miles of coast as we know the nooks and corners of our dooryards.
Doctor Grenfell wished also to make the acquaintance of the people. He wished to visit them in their homes that he might learn their needs and troubles and so know better how to help them. He was not alone to be their doctor. He was to clothe and feed the poor so far as he could and to put them in a way to help themselves.
To do this it was necessary that he know them as a man knows his near neighbors. He must needs know them as the family doctor knows his patients. He was no preacher, but, to some degree, he was to be their pastor and look after their moral as well as their physical welfare. In short, he was to be their friend, and if he were to do his best for them, theywould have to look upon him as a friend and not only call upon him when they were in need, but lend him any assistance they could. To this end they would have to be taught to accept him as one of themselves, come to live among them, and not as an occasional visitor or a foreigner.
With the exception of a few small settlements of a half-dozen houses or so in each settlement, the cabins on the Labrador coast are ten or fifteen and often twenty or more miles apart. If all of them were brought together there would scarcely be enough to make one fair-sized village.
All of the people, as we have seen, live on the seacoast, and not inland. Only wandering Indians live in the interior. Though Labrador is nearly as large as Alaska, there is no permanent dwelling in the whole interior. It is a vast, trackless, uninhabited wilderness of stunted forests and wide, naked barrens.
The Liveyeres, as the natives, other than Indians and Eskimos, are called, have no other occupation than trapping and hunting in winter, and fishing in summer. Their winter cabins are at the heads of deep bays, in the edge of the forest. In the summer they move to their fishing places farther down the bays or on scattered, barren islands, where they live in rude huts or, sometimes, in tents. They catch cod chiefly, but also, at the mouths of rivers, salmon and trout. All the fish are salted, and, like the furs caught in winter, bartered totraders for tea and flour and pork and other necessities of life.
To make the acquaintance of these scattered people, along hundreds of miles of coast, was a big undertaking. And then, too, there were the settlements in the north of Newfoundland, among whose people he was to work. Doctor Grenfell, and his assistants were the only doctors that any of them could call upon.
And there were the fishermen of the fleet. The twenty-five thousand or more men, women and children attached to the Newfoundland summer fisheries on The Labrador formed a temporary summer population.
He could not hope, of course, in the two or three months they were there, to get on intimate terms with all of them, but he was to meet as many as he could, and renew and increase both his acquaintances and his service of the year before. With thePrincess Mayto visit the sick folk ashore, and the hospital shipAlbert, which was to serve, in a manner, as a sea ambulance to take serious cases to the new hospitals at Indian Harbor and Battle Harbor, Doctor Grenfell felt that he had made a good start.
As already suggested, this was an adventurous voyage. Twice that summer thePrincess Maywent aground on the rocks, and once theAlbertwas fastened on a reef. Both vessels lost sectionsof their keels, but otherwise, due to good seamanship, escaped with minor injuries.
At every place the Doctor visited he made a record of the people. After the names of the poorer and destitute ones was listed the things of which they were most in need.
In one poor little cabin the mother of a large family had, though ill, kept to her duties in and out of the house until she could stand on her feet no longer, and when Doctor Grenfell entered the cabin he found her lying helpless on a rough couch of boards, with scarce enough bed clothing to cover her. Some half-clad children shivered behind a miserable broken stove, which radiated little heat but sent forth much smoke. The haggard and worn out father was walking up and down the chill room with a wee mite of a baby in his arms, while it cried pitifully for food. Like all the family the poor little thing was starving.
The mother was suffering with an acute attack of bronchitis and pleurisy. All were suffering from lack of food and clothing. The children were barefooted. One little fellow had no other covering than an old trouser leg drawn over his frail little body. The man's fur hunt had failed the previous winter. Sickness prevented fishing. There was nothing in the house to eat and the family were helpless. Doctor Grenfell came to them none too soon.
In every harbor and bay and cove there wasenough for Doctor Grenfell to do. His heart and hands were full that summer as they have ever been since. His skill was constantly in demand. Here was some one desperately ill, there a finger or an arm to be amputated, or a more serious operation to be performed.
The hospitals were soon filled to overflowing. Doctor Grenfell afloat, and his two assistants with the nurses in the hospitals were busy night and day. The best of it all was many lives were saved. Some who would have been helpless invalids as long as they lived were sent home from the hospitals strong and well and hearty. An instance of this was a girl of fourteen, who had suffered for three years with internal absesses that would eventually have killed her. She was taken to the Battle Harbor Hospital, operated upon, and was soon perfectly well. To this day she is living, a robust contented woman, the mother of a family, and, perchance, a grandmother.
Grenfell was happy. Here was something better than jogging over English highways behind a horse and visiting well-to-do grumbling patients. He was out on the sea he loved, meeting adventure in fog and storm and gale. That was better than a gig on a country road. He was helping people to be happy. He prized that far more than the wealth he might have accumulated, or the reputation he might have gained at home, as a famous physician or surgeon. There is no happiness in the world tocompare with the happiness that comes with the knowledge that one is making others happy and helping them to better living and contentment.
Without knowing it, Grenfell was building a world-fame. If he had known it, he would not have cared a straw. He was working not for fame but for results—for the good he could do others. Nothing else has ever influenced him. Every day he was doing endless good turns without pay or the thought of pay. In this he was serving not only God but his country. And he never neglected his athletics, for it was necessary that he keep his body in the finest physical condition that his brain might always be keen and alert. Grenfell could not have remained a year in the field if he had neglected his body, and he was still an athlete in the pink of condition.
Imagine, if you will, a vast primeval wilderness spreading away before you for hundreds of miles, uninhabited, grim and solitary. None but wild beasts and the roving Indians that hunt them live there. None but they know the mysteries that lie hidden and guarded by those trackless miles of forests and barren reaches of unexplored country.
And so this wilderness has lain since creation, unmarred by the hand of civilized man, clean and unsullied, as God made it. The air, laden with the perfume of spruce and balsam, is pure and wholesome. The water carries no germs from the refuse of man, and one may drink it freely, from river and brook and lake, without fear of contamination. There is no sound to break the silence of ages save the song of river rapids, the thunder of mighty falls, or the whisper or moan of wind in the tree tops; or, perchance, the distant cry of a wolf, the weird laugh of a loon or the honk of the wild goose.
There are no roads or beaten trails other than the trails of the caribou, the wild deer that make this their home. The nearest railroad is half athousand miles away. Automobiles are unknown and would be quite useless here. Great rivers and innumerable emerald lakes render the land impassable for horses. The traveler must make his own trails, and he must depend in summer upon his canoe or boat, and in winter upon his snowshoes and his sledge, hauled by great wolf dogs.
With his gun and traps and fishing gear he must glean his living from the wilderness or from the sea. If he would have a shelter he must fell trees with his axe and build it with his own skill. He has little that his own hands and brain do not provide. He must be resourceful and self-reliant.
I venture to say there is not a boy living—a real red-blooded boy or red-blooded man either for that matter—who has not dreamed of the day when he might experience the thrill of venturing into such a wilderness as we have described. This was America as the discoverers found it, and as it was before the great explorers and adventurers opened it to civilization. This was Labrador as Grenfell found Labrador, and as it is to-day—the great "silent peninsula of the North." It occupies a large corner of the North American continent, and much of it is still unexplored, a vast, grim, lonely land, but one of majestic grandeur and beauty.
"The Doctor On A Winter's Journey""THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY"ToList
"THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY"ToList
The hardy pioneers and settlers of Labrador, as we have seen, have made their homes only on the seacoast, leaving the interior to wandering Indian hunters. They do, to be sure, enter the wildernessfor short distances in winter when they are following their business as hunters, but none has ever made his home beyond the sound of the sea.
In the forests of the south and southeast are the Mountaineer Indians, as they are called by all English speaking people; or, if we wish to put on airs and assume French we may call them theMontaignaisIndians. In the North are the Nascaupees, today the most primitive Indians on the North American continent. In the west and southwest are the Crees.
All of these Indians are of the great Algonquin family, and are much like those that Natty Bumpo chummed with or fought against, and those who lived in New York and New England when the settlers first came to what are now our eastern states. Labrador is so large, and there are so few Indians to occupy it, however, that the explorer may wander through it for months, as I have done, without ever once seeing the smoke rising from an Indian tepee or hearing a human voice.
The Eskimos of the north coast are much like the Eskimos of Greenland, both in language and in the way they live. Their summer shelters are skin tents, which they calltupeks. In winter they build dome-shaped houses from blocks of snow, though they sometimes have cave-like shelters of stone and earth built against the side of a hill. The snow houses they calliglooweuks, or houses of snow; the stone and earth shelters areigloosoaks, or bigigloos, the word igloo, in the Eskimo language, meaning house. When winter comes big snow drifts soon cover the igloosoaks, and the snow keeps out the wind and cold. As a further protection, snow tunnels, through which the people crawl on hands and knees, are built out from the entrance to the igloosoak, and these keep all drafts, when a gale blows, from those within.
The Eskimos heat their snow igloos, and in treeless regions their igloosoaks also, with lamps of hollowed stone. These lamps are made in the form of a half moon. Seal oil is used as fuel, and a rag, if there is any to be had, or moss, resting upon the straight side of the lamp, does service as the wick.
Of course the snow igloos must never be permitted to get so warm that the snow will melt. The temperature in a snow house is therefore kept at about thirty degrees, or a little lower. Nevertheless it is comfortable enough, when the temperature outside is perhaps forty or fifty degrees below zero and quite likely a stiff breeze blowing. Comfort is always a matter of comparison. I have spent a good many nights in snow houses, and was always glad to enjoy the comfort they offered. To the traveler who has been in the open all day, the snow house is a cozy retreat and a snug enough place to rest and sleep in.
On the east coast the Eskimos are more civilized and live much like the liveyeres. All Eskimos arekind hearted, hospitable people. Once, I remember, when an Eskimo host noticed that the bottom of my sealskin mocasins had worn through to the stocking, he pulled those he wore off his feet, and insisted upon me wearing them. He had others, to be sure, but they were not so good as those he gave me. No matter how poorly off he is, an Eskimo will feel quite offended if a visitor does not share with him what he has to eat.
Though Dr. Grenfell's hospitals are farther south, on the coast where the liveyeres have their cabins, he cruises northward to the Eskimo country of the east coast every summer, and in the summer has nursing stations there. Sometimes, when there is a case demanding it, he brings the sick Eskimos to one of the hospitals. But, generally, the east coast Eskimos are looked after by the Moravian Brethren in their missions, and in summer Dr. Grenfell calls at the missions to give them his medical and surgical assistance.
As stated before, the liveyeres and others than the Indians, build their cabins on the coast, usually on the shores of bays, but always by the salt water and where they can hear the sound of the sea. Every man of them is a hunter or a fisherman or both, and the boys grow up with guns in their hands, and pulling at an oar or sailing a boat. They begin as soon as they can walk to learn the ways of the wilderness and of the wild things that live in it, and they are good sailors and know agreat deal about the sea and the fish while they are still wee lads. That is to be their profession, and they are preparing for it.
The Labrador home of the liveyere usually contains two rooms, but occasionally three, though there are many, especially north of Hamilton Inlet, of but a single room. All have an enclosed lean-to porch at the entrance. This serves not only as a protection from drifting snow in winter, but as a place where stovewood is piled, dog harness and snowshoes are hung, and various articles stored.
In the cabin is a large wood-burning stove, the first and most important piece of furniture. There is a home-made table and sometimes a home-made chair or two, though usually chests in which clothing and furs are stored are utilized also as seats. A closet built at one side holds the meager supply of dishes. On a mantelshelf the clock ticks, if the cabin boasts one, and by its side rests a well-thumbed Bible.
Bunks, built against the rear of the room, serve as beds. If there is a second room, it supplies additional sleeping quarters, with bunks built against the walls as in the living room. Travelers and visitors carry their own sleeping bags and bedding with them and sleep upon the floor. This is the sort of bed Dr. Grenfell enjoys when sleeping at night in a liveyere's home.
On the beams overhead are rifles and shotguns, always within easy reach, for a shot at some gamemay offer at any time. The side walls of the cabins are papered with old newspapers, or illustrations cut from old magazines.
The more thrifty and cleanly scrub floors, tables, doors and all woodwork with soap and sand once a week, until everything is spotlessly clean. But along the coast one comes upon cabins often enough that appear never to have had a cleaning day, and in which the odor of seal oil and fish is heavy.
Those of the Newfoundland fishermen that bring their families to the coast live in all sorts of cabins. Some are well built and comfortable, while others are merely sod-covered huts with earthen floor. These are occupied, however, only during the fishing season. The fishermen move into them early in July and begin to leave them early in September.
As stated elsewhere, no farming can be done in Labrador, and the only way men can make a living is by hunting and fishing. Eskimos seldom venture far inland on their hunting and trapping expeditions, but some of the liveyeres go fifty or sixty miles from the coast to set their traps, and some of those in Hamilton Inlet go up the Grand River for a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles, and others go up the Nascaupee River for upwards of a hundred miles.
Trapping is all done in winter and it is a lonely and adventurous calling. Early in September, the men who go the greatest distance inland set out for their trapping grounds. Usually two men gotogether. They build a small log hut called a "tilt," about eight by ten feet in size. Against each of two sides a bunk is made of saplings and covered with spruce or balsam boughs. On the boughs the sleeping bags are spread, and the result is a comfortable bed. The bunks also serve as seats. A little sheet iron stove that weighs, including stovepipe, about eighteen pounds and is easy to transport, heats the tilt, and answers very well for the trapper's simple cooking. The stovepipe, protruding through the roof, serves as a chimney.
The main tilt is used as a base of supplies, and here reserve provisions are stored together with accumulations of furs as they are caught. Fat salt pork, flour, baking powder or soda, salt, tea and Barbadoes molasses complete the list of provisions carried into the wilderness from the trading post. Other provisions must be hunted.
Each man provides himself with a frying pan, a tin cup, a spoon or two, a tin pail to serve as a tea kettle and sometimes a slightly larger pail for cooking. On his belt he carries a sheath knife, which he uses for cooking, skinning, eating and general utility. He rarely encumbers himself with a fork.
For use on the trail each man has a stove similar to the one that heats the tilt, a small cotton tent, and a toboggan.
From the base tilt the trapping paths or trails lead out. Each trapper has a path which he has established and which he works alone. He haulshis sleeping bag, provisions and other equipment on his toboggan or, as he calls it, "flat sled." He carries his rifle in his hand and his ax is stowed on the toboggan, for he never knows when a quick shot will get him a pelt or a day's food.
Sometimes tilts are built along the path at the end of a day's journey, but if there is no tilt the cotton tent is pitched. In likely places traps are set for marten, mink or fox. Ice prevents trapping for the otter in winter, but they are often shot.
At the end of a week or fortnight the partners meet at the base tilt. Otherwise each man is alone, and we may imagine how glad they are to see each other when the meeting time comes. But they cannot be idle. Out through the snow-covered forest, along the shores of frozen lakes and on wide bleak marshes the trapper has one hundred traps at least, and some of them as many as three hundred. The men must keep busy to look after them properly, and so, after a Sunday's rest together they again separate and are away on their snowshoes hauling their toboggans after them.
At Christmas time they go back to their homes, down by the sea, to see their wives and children and to make merry for a week. What a meeting that always is! How eagerly the little ones have been looking forward to the day when Daddy would come! O, that blessed Christmas week! But it is only seven days long, and on the second day of January the trappers are away again to theirtilts and trails and traps. Again early in March they visit their homes for another week, and then again return to the deep wilderness to remain there until June.
Sometimes the father never comes back, and then the wilderness carries in its heart the secret of his end. Then, oh, those hours of happy expectancy that become days of grave anxiety and finally weeks of black despair! Such a case happened once when I was in Labrador. Later they found the young trapper's body where the man had perished, seventy miles from his home.
As I have said, the life of the trapper is filled with adventure. Many a narrow escape he has, but he never loses his grit. He cannot afford to. Gilbert Blake was one of four trappers that rescued me several years ago, when I had been on short rations in the wilderness for several weeks, and without food for two weeks. I had eaten my moccasins, my feet were frozen and I was so weak I could not walk. Gilbert and I have been friends since then and we later traveled the wilderness together. Gilbert has no trapping partner. His "path" is a hundred miles inland from his home. All winter, with no other companion than a little dog, he works alone in that lonely wilderness.
One winter game was scarce, and Gilbert's provisions were practically exhausted when he set out to strike up his traps preparatory to his visit home in March. He was several miles from his tilt whensuddenly one of his snowshoes broke beyond repair. He could not move a step without snowshoes, for the snow lay ten feet deep. He had no skin with him with which to net another snowshoe, even if he were to make the frame; and he had nothing to eat.
A Labrador blizzard came on, and Gilbert for three days was held prisoner in his tent. He spent his time trying to make a serviceable snowshoe with netting woven from parts of his clothing torn into strips. When at last the storm ended and he struck his tent he was famished.
Packing his things on his toboggan he set out for the tilt, but had gone only a short distance when the improvised snowshoe broke. He made repeated efforts to mend it, but always it broke after a few steps forward. He was in a desperate situation.
He had now been nearly three days without eating. He was still several miles from the tilt where he had a scant supply that had been reserved for his journey home. To proceed to the tilt was obviously impossible, and he could only perish by remaining where he was.
Utterly exhausted after a fruitless effort to flounder forward, he sat down upon his flatsled, and looked out over the silent snow waste. Weakened with hunger, it seemed to him that he had reached the end of his endurance. So far as he knew there was not another human being within a hundred miles of where he sat, and he had noexpectation or slightest hope of any one coming to his assistance. "I was scrammed," said he, which meant, in our vernacular, he was "all in."
Gilbert is a fine Christian man, and all the time, as he told me in relating his experience, he had been praying God to show him a way to safety. He never was a coward, and he was not afraid to die, for he had faced death many times before and men of the wilderness become accustomed to the thought that sometime, out there in the silence and alone, the hand of the grim messenger may grasp them. But he was afraid for Mrs. Blake and the four little ones at home. Were he to perish there would be no one to earn a living for them. He was frightened to think of the privations those he loved would suffer.
Suddenly, in the distance, he glimpsed two objects moving over the snow. As they came nearer he discovered that they were men. He shouted and waved his arms, and there was an answering signal. Presently two Mountaineer Indians approached, hauling loaded toboggans, laughing and shouting a greeting as they recognized him.
"'Twas an answer to my prayers," said Gilbert in relating the incident to me. "I was fair scrammed when I saw them Indians. They were the first Indians I had seen the whole winter. They weren't pretty, but just then they looked to me like angels from heaven, and just as pretty as any angels could look."
The Indians had recently made a killing, and their toboggans were loaded with fresh caribou meat. They made Gilbert eat until they nearly killed him with kindness, and they had an extra pair of snowshoes, which they gave him.
This is the life of the trapper on The Labrador. This is the sort of man he is—hardy, patient, brave and reverent. He is a man of grit and daring, as he must be to cheerfully meet, with a stout heart and a smile, the constant hardships and adventures that beset him.
Dr. Grenfell declares that it is no hardship to devote his life to helping men like this. His work among them brings constant joy to him. They appreciate him, and he has grown to look upon them as all members of his big family. He takes a personal and devoted interest in each. It is a great comfort to the men to know that if any are sick or injured at home while they are away on the trails the mission doctor will do his best to heal them. Before Grenfell went to The Labrador there was no doctor to call upon the whole winter through.
The trapping season for fur ends in April. Then the trapper "strikes up" his traps, hangs them in trees where he will find them the following fall, packs his belongings on his toboggan and returns home, unless he is to remain to hunt bear. In that case he must wait for the bears to come forth from their winter's sleep, and this will keep the hunter in the wilderness until afterthe "break-up" comes and the ice goes out. Those who go far inland usually wait in any case until the ice is out of the streams and boat or canoe traveling is possible and safe.
The break-up sets in, usually, early in June. Then come torrential rains. The snow-covered wilderness is transformed into a sea of slush. New brooks rise everywhere and pour down with rush and roar into lakes and rivers. The rivers over-flow their banks. Trees are uprooted and are swept forward on the flood. Broken ice jams and pounds its way through the rapids with sound like thunder. The spring break-up is an inspiring and wonderful spectacle.
When the hunting season ends and the trappers return from their winter trails, they enjoy a respite at home mending fishing nets, repairing boats and making things tidy and ship-shape for the summer's fishing. Everyone is now looking forward with keen anticipation to the first run of fish. From the time the ice goes out all one hears along the coast is talk of fish. "Any signs of fish, b'y?" One hears it everywhere, for everybody is asking everybody else that question.
In Hamilton Inlet and Sandwich Bay salmon fisheries are of chief importance. Salmon here are all salted down in barrels and not tinned, as on the Pacific coast. Once there was a salmon cannery in Sandwich Bay, but the Hudson's Bay Company bought it and demolished it, as there was doubtlessless work and more profit for the Company in salted salmon. Elsewhere the fisheries are mainly for cod.
In a frontier land it is not easy to earn a living. Everybody must work hard all the time. Men, women, boys and girls all do their share at the fishing. Women and children help to split and cure the fish. It is a proud day for any lad when he is big enough and strong enough to pull a stroke with the heavy oar, and go out to sea with his father.
The Labrador, or Arctic, current now and again keeps ice drifting along the coast the whole summer through. When ice is there fishermen cannot set their nets and fish traps, for the ice would tear the gear and ruin it. Neither can they fish successfully with hook and line when the ice is in. When this happens few fish are caught.
Then, too, there are seasons when game and animals move away from certain regions, and then the trapper cannot get them. Perhaps they go farther inland, and too far for him to follow. I have seen times when ptarmigans were so thick men killed them for dog food, and perhaps the next year there would not be a ptarmigan to be found to put into the pot for dinner. I have seen the snow trampled down everywhere in the woods and among the brush by innumerable snowshoe rabbits, and I have seen other years when not a single rabbit track was to be found anywhere. It is the same withcaribou and the fur bearing animals as well. In those years when game is scarce the people are hard put to it to get a bit of fresh meat to eat.
When no fresh meat is to be had salt fish, bread (rarely with butter) and tea, with molasses as sweetening, is the diet. There is no milk, even for the babies. If all the salt fish has been sold or traded in for flour and tea, bread and tea three times a day is all there is to eat.
People cannot keep well on just bread and tea, or even bread and salt fish and tea. It is not hard for us to imagine how we would feel if every meal we had day in and day out was only bread and tea, and sometimes not enough of that.
No less perilous is the business of fisherman and sealer than that of hunter and trapper. Every turn a man makes down on The Labrador is likely to carry him into some adventure that will place his life in danger, at sea as on land. But there is no way out of it if a living is to be made.
It is a strange fact that one never recognizes a great deal of danger in the life that one is accustomed to living, no matter how perilous it may seem to others. If a Labradorman were to come to any of our towns or cities his heart would be in his mouth at every turn, for a time at least, dodging automobiles and street cars. It would appear to him an exceedingly hazardous existence that we live, and he would long to be back to the peace and quiet and safety of his sea and wilderness. And our streets would be dangerous ground to him, indeed, until he became accustomed to dodging motor cars. He is nimble enough, and on his own ground could put most of us to shame in that respect, but here he is lacking in experience.
The same hunter will face the storms andsolitude of the wilderness trail without ever once feeling that he is in danger or afraid. He knows how to do it. That is the life that he has been reared to live. The average city man would perish in a day if left alone to care for himself on a trapper's trail. He has never learned the business, and he would not know how to take care of himself.
The Labradorman being both hunter and fisherman, is perfectly at home both in the wilderness and on the sea. He has the dangers of both to meet, but he does not recognize them as dangerous callings, though every year some mate or neighbor loses his life. "'Tis the way o' th' Lard."
Ice still covers the Labrador harbors in May, and this is when the seal hunt begins, or, as the liveyere says, he goes "swileing." He calls a seal a "swile." With a harpoon attached to a long line he stations himself at a breathing hole in the ice which the seals under the ice have kept open, and out of which, now and again, one raises its nose and fills its lungs with air, for seals are animals, not fish, and must have air to breathe or they will drown. The hole is a small one, but large enough to cast the spear, or harpoon, into.
Seals are exceedingly shy animals, and the slightest movement will frighten them away. Therefore the seal hunter must stand perfectly still, like a graven image, with harpoon poised, and that is pretty cold work in zero weather. If luck is with him he will after a time see a small movement inthe water, and a moment later a seal's nose will appear. Then like a flash of lightning, he casts the harpoon, and if his aim is good, as it usually is, a seal is fast on the barbs of the harpoon.
The harpoon point is attached to a long line, while the harpoon shaft, by an ingenious arrangement, will slip free from the point. Now, while the shaft remains in the hands of the hunter, the line begins running rapidly down through the hole, for the seal in a vain endeavor to free itself dives deeply. The other end of the line also remaining in the hands of the hunter is fastened to the shaft of the harpoon, and there is a struggle. In time, the seal, unable to return to its hole for air, is drowned, and then is hauled out through the hole upon the ice.
These north Atlantic seals, having no fine fur like the Pacific seals, are chiefly valuable for their fat. The pelts are, however, of considerable value to the natives. The women tan them and make them into watertight boots or other clothing. Of course a good many of them find their way to civilization, where they are made into pocketbooks and bags, and they make a very fine tough leather indeed. The flesh is utilized for dog food, though, as in the case of young seals particularly, it is often eaten by the people, particularly when other sorts of meat is scarce. Most of the people, and particularly the Eskimos, are fond of the flippers and liver.
Sometimes the seals come out of their holes tolie on the ice and bask in the sun. Then the hunter, simulating the movements of a seal, crawls toward his game until he is within rifle shot.
Should a gale of wind arise suddenly, the ice may be separated into pans and drift abroad before the seal hunters can make their escape to land. In that case a hunter may be driven to sea on an ice pan, and he is fortunate if his neighbors discover him and rescue him in boats.
After the ice goes out, those who own seal nets set them, and a great many seals are caught in this way. At this season the seals frequently are seen sunning themselves on the shore rocks, and the hunters stalk and shoot them.
Newfoundlanders carry on their sealing in steamers built for the purpose. They go out to the great ice floe, far out to sea and quite too far for the liveyeres to reach in small craft. Here the seals are found in thousands. These vessels, depending upon the size, bring home a cargo sometimes numbering as many as 20,000 to 30,000 seals in a single ship, and there are about twenty-five ships in the fleet.
This terrible slaughter has seriously decreased the numbers. The Labrador Eskimos used to depend upon them largely for their living. They can do this no longer, for not every season, as formerly, are there enough seals to supply needs. All of the five varieties of North Atlantic seals are caught on the coast—harbor, jar, harp, hooded andsquare flipper. The last named is also called the great bearded seal and sometimes the sealion. The first named is the smallest of all.
Scarce a year passes that we do not hear of a serious disaster in the Newfoundland sealing fleet. Sometimes severe snow storms arise when the men are hunting on the floe, and then the men are often lost. Sometimes the ships are crushed in the big floe and go to the bottom. The latest of these disasters was the disappearance of theSouthern Cross, with a crew of one hundred seventy-five men.
One of my good friends, Captain Jacob Kean, used to command theVirginia Lake, one of the largest of the sealers. She carried a crew of about two hundred men. A few years before Captain Kean lost his life in one of the awful sea disasters of the coast, he related to me one of his experiences at the sealing.
Captain Kean was in luck that year, and found the seals early and in great numbers. The crew had made a good hunt on the floe, and they are loading them with about a third of a cargo aboard when suddenly the ice closed in and theVirginia Lakewas "pinched," with the result that a good sized hole was broken in her planking on the port side forward below the water line. The sea rushed in, and it looked for a time as though the vessel would sink, and there were not boats enough to accommodate the crew even if boats could have been used, which was hardly possible under theconditions, for the sea was clogged with heaving ice pans.
The pumps were manned, and Captain Kean, and with every man not working the pumps, with feverish haste shifted the cargo to the starboard side and aft. Presently, with the weight shifted, the ship lay over on her starboard side and her bow rose above the water until the crushed planking and the hole were above the water line.
The hole now exposed, Captain Kean stuffed it with sea biscuit, or hardtack. Over this he nailed a covering of canvas. Tubs of butter were brought up, and the canvas thoroughly and thickly buttered. This done, a sheathing of planking was spiked on over the buttered canvas. Then the cargo was re-shifted into place, the vessel settled back upon an even keel, and it was found that the leak was healed. The sea biscuit, absorbing moisture, swelled, and this together with the canvas, butter and planking proved effectual. Captain Kean loaded his ship with seals and took her into St. John's harbor safely with a full cargo.
The following year theVirginia Lakewas again pinched by the ice, but this time was lost. Captain Kean and his crew took refuge on the ice floe, and were fortunately rescued by another sealer. When Captain Kean lost his life a few years later the sealing fleet lost one of its most successful masters. He was a fine Christian gentleman and as able a seaman as ever trod a bridge.
But this is the life of the sealer and the fisherman of the northern sees. Terrible storms sometimes sweep down that rugged, barren coast and leave behind them a harvest of wrecked vessels and drowned men and destitute families that have lost their only support.
These were the conditions that Grenfell found in Labrador, and this was the breed of men, these hunters and trappers, fishermen and sealers—sturdy, honest, God-fearing folk—with whom Grenfell took up his life. He had elected to share with them the hardships of their desolate land and the perils of their ice-choked sea. They needed him, and to them he offered a service that was Christ-like in its breadth and devotion.
It was a peculiar field. No ordinary man could have entered it with hope of success. Mere ability as a physician and surgeon of wide experience was not enough. In addition to this, success demanded that he be a Christian gentleman with high ideals, and freedom from bigotry. Courage, moral as well as physical, was a necessity. Only a man who was himself a fearless and capable navigator could make the rounds of the coast and respond promptly to the hurried and urgent calls to widely separated patients. Constant exposure to hardship and peril demanded a strong body and a level head. Balanced judgment, high executive and administrative ability, deep insight into human character and unbounded sympathy for those who suffered or werein trouble were indispensable characteristics. All of these attributes Grenfell possessed.
A short time before Mr. Moody's death, Grenfell met Moody and told him of the inspiration he had received from that sermon, delivered in London many years before by the great evangelist.
"What have you been doing since?" asked Moody.
What has Grenfell been doing since? He has established hospitals at Battle Harbor, Indian Harbor, Harrington and Northwest River in Labrador, and at St. Anthony in northeastern Newfoundland. He has established schools and nursing stations both in Labrador and Newfoundland. He has built and maintains two orphanages. He founded the Seamen's Institute in St. Johns.
Year after year, since that summer's day when theAlbertanchored in Domino Run and Grenfell first met the men of the Newfoundland fishing fleet and the liveyeres of the Labrador coast, winter and summer, Grenfell himself and the doctors that assist him have patrolled that long desolate coast giving the best that was in them to the people that lived there. Grenfell has preached the Word, fed the hungry, clothed the naked, sheltered the homeless and righted many wrongs. He has fought disease and poverty, evil and oppression. Hardship, peril and prejudice have fallen to his lot, but he has met them with a courage and determination that never faltered, and he is still "up and at it."
Grenfell's life has been a life of service to others. Freely and joyfully he has given himself and all that was in him to the work of making others happier, and the people of the coast love and trust him. With pathetic confidence they lean upon him and call him in their need, as children lean upon their father, and he has never failed to respond. When a man who had lost a leg felt the need for an artificial one, he appealed to Grenfell: