discover one's limitations. For several Sundays now I have been
labouring to instruct our little ones in the story of the birth of
Jesus, and I have repeated the details again and again in order to
impress them upon their wandering minds. Last Sunday I questioned
them, and finally asked triumphantly, "Well, David, who was the Babe
in the manger?" With a wild look round the room for inspiration, David
enunciated with swelling pride, "Beulah, Teacher."
We had a lovely time on Christmas. The night before the children hung
up their stockings, but it was midnight before I could get round to
fill them, they were so excited and wakeful. I "hied me softly to my
stilly couch," and was just dropping off into delicious slumber when
at 1 A.M. the strains of musical instruments (which you had
sent) were heard below. Then I appreciated to the full the sentiment
of that poet who sang:
"Were children silent, we should half believe
That joy were dead, its lamp would burn so low."
Later in the day we had our Christmas tree, when Topsy was overjoyed
at receiving her first doll. There is something very sweet about the
child in spite of all her wilful ways, and she is a real little mother
to her doll.
We had a great dinner, as you may imagine. I overheard some of the
little boys teasing Solomon, who is only three, to see if he would not
forgo some particular choice morsel upon his plate, to which an
emphatic "no" was always returned. Then by varying gradations of
importance came the question, would he give it to Teacher? The answer
not being considered satisfactory, Gabriel felt that the time had come
for the supreme test, Would Solomon give it to God and the angels? The
reply left so much to be desired that it is better unrecorded.
In our harbour lives a blind Frenchman, François Détier by name. He
came here in his youth to escape conscription. The fisher people have
travelled a long road since the old feuds which scarred the early
history of Le Petit Nord, and François is a much-loved member of the
community. Since the oncoming of the inoperable tumour, which little
by little has deprived him of his sight, the neighbours vie with each
other by helping him. One day a load of wood will find its way to his
door. The next a few fresh "turr," a very "fishy" sea auk, are left
ever so quietly inside his woodshed--and so it goes. It is a constant
marvel to me that these people, who live so perilously near the margin
of want, are always so eager to share up. François is sitting in our
cellar as I write pulling nails from old boxes with my new patent
nail-drawer. A moment ago I could not resist the temptation of putting
the _Marseillaise_ on the gramophone, and I went down to find him
with tears rolling down his cheeks as he hummed,
"Allons, enfants de la Patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé."
We've invented a new job for him; he is to "serve" our pipes with
bandages. This means swathing them round and round, and finally adding
an outer covering of newspaper, which has a much-vaunted reputation
for keeping cold out.
Let me tell you the latest epic of the hospital pipes. Those to the
bathroom run through the office. In the last blizzard they burst. The
fire in the fireplace was a conflagration; the steam radiator was
singing a credible song; and as the water trickled down the pipe from
the little fissure, it froze solid before it was three inches on its
way!
A friend sent me for Christmas a charming little poem. One verse runs:
"May nothing evil cross this door,
And may ill fortune never pry
About these Windows; may the roar
And rains go by.
"Strengthened by faith, these rafters will
Withstand the battering of the storm;
This hearth, though all the world grow chill,
Will keep us warm."
I am thinking of hanging the card opposite our pipes as a reminder of
the "way they should go."
_January 15_
The journey to Nameless Cove Fair was all that I had hoped for and a
little more thrown in to make weight. Clear and shining, with
glittering white snow below and sparkling blue sky above, the day
promised fair in spite of a mercury standing at ten below zero, and a
number of komatiks from the Mission started merrily forth. All went
well, and we reached Nameless Cove without adventure, but at sundown
the wind rose. When we left the sale at ten o'clock to return to the
house where I was to spend the night, we had to face the full fury of
a living winter gale. I "caught" both my cheeks on the way, or in
common parlance I froze them. All through that long tug we were
cheered by the thought of a large jug of cream which we had placed on
the stove to thaw when we left the house. Do you fancy that cream had
thawed? Not a bit of it. The fire was doing its best, but old Boreas
was holding our feast prisoner. It had not even begun to disintegrate
around the edges. We cut lumps from the icy mass, dropped them into
our cocoa (which we made by cooking it inside the stove and directly
on top of the coals), hastily popped the mixture into our mouths
before it should have a chance to freeze _en route_, and went promptly
to bed. I draw a veil over that night. I drew everything else I could
find over me in the course of it. A sadder and a wiser and a chillier
woman I rose the morrow morn. Another member of the staff, who had
slept in an adjoining house, froze his toe in bed.
When we reached home, and I left the komatik at the hospital door, I
made out 'Senath dancing in an agitatedly aimless fashion on our
platform. She was also waving her arms about. For a moment it crossed
my mind that she had lost her modicum of wits, but as she was
immediately joined by Tryphena, I gave up the theory as untenable, and
continued to hasten up the hill to the Home. Our boiler had sprung,
not one but many leaks, and the precious hot water destined for the
cleansing of forty was flooding the already spotless kitchen floor. As
it is the middle of the week I had not suspected this calamity, Sunday
being the invariable day selected for all burst pipes, special rat
banquets, broken noses, toothaches, skinned shins, and such
misadventures. The problem now presenting itself for prompt solution
is: 20° below zero, a gale blowing from the northwest, twoscore small,
unwashed orphans, and a burst boiler!
[Illustration: HE FROZE HIS TOE IN BED]
_January 21_
The oldest inhabitants, and all the others as well, claim that this is
the most remarkable winter in thirty years. Not that one is deceived.
I suspect them rather of making excuses for the consistently
disconcerting climate of Britain's oldest colony.
All the same, literally the worst storm I ever experienced has been in
progress for the last two days. It began in the morning by the falling
of a few innocent flakes. Then the north wind decided to take a hand.
All night and all day and all night again it shrieked around the
house, driving incredible quantities of snow before it. Half an hour
after it began, you could not see two yards in front of your face. The
man who attends to the hospital heating-plant had to crawl on his
hands and knees in order to reach his destination, taking exactly one
hour to make the distance of two hundred yards.
At this institution it is the time-honoured custom to rise at
five-thirty each morning, which custom, although doubtless good for
our immortal souls, is distinctly trying to our too painfully mortal
flesh. Added to which, in spite of all our efforts, our pipes are
frozen, and in this country the ground does not thaw out completely
until July or August, when we are making preparations for being frozen
in again. Think of what this means for a household of over forty when
every drop of water has to be hauled in barrels by our boys, and the
superintendent has to stand over them to compel them to bring enough.
Cleanliness at such a cost must surely be a long way towards
godliness. I can now appreciate the story of the chaplain from a
whaling ship who is said to have wandered into an encampment of the
Eskimos. He told the people of heaven with all its glories, and it
meant nothing to these children of the North; they were not
interested in his story. But when he changed his theme and spoke of
hell, with its everlasting fires which needed no replenishing, they
cried, "Where is it? Tell us that we may go"; and big and little, they
clambered over him, eager for details.
[Illustration: A LONG WAY ON THE HEAVENWARD ROAD]
By morning every room on the windward side of our house looked like
the inside of an igloo. The fine drift had silted in through each most
minute cranny and crevice--even though we have double windows all
over the building; and on the night in question we had decided that
sufficient fresh air was entering in spite of us to permit our
disobeying our self-imposed anti-tuberculosis regulations. The wind
and snow are so persistent and so penetrating that the merest slit
gives them entrance, and the accumulations of such a night make one
fancy in the morning that the King of the Golden River has paid an
infuriated visit to our part of the globe. When I went into the
babies' dormitory every little bed was snowed under, and only the
children's dark hair contrasted with the universal whiteness.
The second night I verily thought the house would come about our ears.
The gale had increased in fury, the thermometer stood at thirty below,
and I stayed up to be ready for emergencies. At midnight, thinking one
room must surely be blown in, I carried the sleeping babes into
another wing of the house. If for any reason we had had to leave the
building that night, none of us could have lived to reach a place of
safety. I wish you could have seen us the following morning. The snow
had drifted in so that in places it was over six feet high. I ventured
out and found that every exit but one from the Home was snowed up. We
had therefore to dig ourselves out of the woodshed door and into the
others from the outside. You make a dab with a shovel in the direction
where you think you last saw the desired door before the storm, and
trust the fates for results. Part of our roof has blown off and our
chimney is in a tottering condition.
The greatest menace was the telegraph wires. The drifts in places were
so huge that as one walked along, the wires were liable to trip one
up. The doctor has just taken a picture of the dog team being fed from
the third-story window of the hospital. They are clustered on the snow
just outside and on a level with the bottom of the window. Some of the
fishermen in their tiny cottages had to be dug out by kindly
neighbours, as they were completely snowed under!
The storm will greatly delay travelling and it may be almost spring
before this reaches you. It may interest you to know how my letters
come to you in the winter-time, and then perhaps you will not wonder
so much at the delays. The mail is carried across country to Mistaken
Cove, on the west coast, and then by eight relays of couriers with
their dog teams to Deerlake where the railway touches. It is a slow
method of progress, and there are countless delays owing to the
frequent blizzards. Often the mail men fail to make connections, and
the letters may lie a week or a fortnight at some outlandish station.
At one place the postmaster cannot even read, and the letters have to
be marked with crosses at the previous stopping-places, to indicate
the direction of their destination. Another postmaster, well known for
his dishonesty, failed to get removed by the authorities because he
was the only man in the place who could either read or write, and was
therefore indispensable. Formerly all the letters had to go to St.
John's, a day's extra journey, and be sorted there, sent back across
the island to Run-by-Guess, eight hours across Cabot Straits, and then
across the Atlantic to England. In this way a letter might take nearly
three months to make the journey, and we are sometimes that length of
time without news.
Now a "mild" has set in, and the incessant drip, drip, drip on the
balcony roof outside my window makes me perfectly understand how
lunacy and death follow the persistent falling of a single drop on one
spot on the forehead.
_February 11_
Last week I had a three days' "cruise" while the doctor considerately
sent a nurse up here to try her hand at my family. This time the
cruise was "on the dogs" instead of the rolling sea. We left for Belvy
(Bellevue) Bay in good time in the morning--"got our anchors early,"
as our "carter" put it. The animation of the dogs, the lovely
snow-covered country, the bright winter's sun pouring down, and doubly
brilliant by reflection from the dazzling snow, the huge bonfire in
the woods where we "cooked the kettle," all make one understand the
call which the gipsy answers. Of course there is another side to the
story, when one is caught out in bitter weather in a blizzard of
driving snow and sleet, and loses the way, or perhaps has to stay out
in the open through the night. For instance, this winter four of the
Mission dogs have perished through frost-bite on these journeys; and
only last week we heard that one of the mail carriers on the west
coast had been frozen to death.
A few years ago one dark and stormy night the Church of England
clergyman was called to the sick-bed of a parishioner. He set out at
once to cross the frozen bay and reached the cottage in safety. After
a visit with the dying man he started on his homeward way. It was cold
but clear, and he covered half the distance without trouble. Then the
weather veered and blinding snow began to drive. The traveller lost
his way battling against it, and finally sank down utterly exhausted.
He was found dead in the morning on the open bay.
A day's trip brought us to Grevigneux, a charming little village
nestling in a great bowl formed by the towering cliffs above and
around it. Every one in the settlement is a Roman Catholic. Never did
I receive such a welcome; the people are so friendly and unspoiled.
The priest is a Frenchman, sensible, hearty, full of humour and love
for his people. Both his ideas and his manner of expressing them are
naïve and appealing. I had been told that in his sermons he admonished
certain members of his flock by name for their shortcomings. When I
questioned him about this he gave me the following explanation: "You
see, miss, when I die I shall stand before the Lord and my people will
be standing behind me. The Lord will look them over and then look at
me, and if any one of them isn't there he will say, 'Cartier, where is
Tom Flannigan?' And I should have to answer, 'Gone to Purgatory for
stealing boots.' And the Lord will say to me, 'Why, didn't he know
better than to steal boots? You ought to have told him.' Whatever
could I say for myself then?"
The next night we spent at Lance au Diable, locally known as "Lancy
Jobble." In this place there is a "medicine man," with methods unique
in science. He is the seventh son of a seventh son, and his healing
powers are reputed to be little short of miraculous. Legend has it
that such must never request payment for services, nor must the
patient ever thank him, lest the efficacy of the cure be nullified. He
is an unselfish man, a thorough believer in his own "gift"; and last
summer, for instance, right in the middle of the fishing season, he
walked thirty miles through swamp and marsh ridden with black flies,
to see a sick woman who desired his aid. Doubtless the spell of his
buoyant personality does bring comfort and relief. In the adjoining
settlement of Bareneed lives an enormously fat old woman of
seventy-odd summers. Life passes over her, and its only effect is to
make her rotund and unwieldy. When the sick come to Brother Luke for
treatment, if any of the few drugs which he has accumulated chance to
have lost their labels--a not uncommon contingency in this land of
mist and fog--he takes down a likely-looking bottle from the shelf,
and tries a dose of the contents on this Mrs. Goochy--and awaits
results. If nothing untoward transpires, he then passes the medicine
on to the patient. Mrs. Goochy has a strong acquisitive bias, and
raises no objections to this vicarious proceeding. She argues: "I
doesn't need 'un now, but there be's no tellin'. I may need 'un when I
can't get 'un."
[Illustration: THE SEVENTH SON]
Occasionally the sailing is not so smooth. While we were there the
doctor saw a case of a woman from whom this Æsculapius had attempted
to extract an offending molar, his only instrument being a kind of
miniature winch which screws on to the undesired tooth. Its action
proved so prompt and powerful that not only did it remove the tooth
intended, but four others as well, and the entire alveolar process
connected with them.
[Illustration: ITS ACTION WAS PROMPT AND POWERFUL]
It often made me feel ashamed to find how much some of these people
have made of their meagre opportunities. At one house a mother told me
that she had only been able to go to school for six months when she
was a girl, yet she had taught herself to read, and later her
children also. She showed me most interesting articles which she had
written for a Canadian newspaper describing the life on Le Petit Nord.
She often had to sit up until two in the morning to knit her
children's clothes, and rise again at dawn to prepare breakfast for
the men of the household.
The following day saw us homeward bound, only this time the travelling
was not so romantic, for a "mild" had set in, and the going was
superlatively slushy. The dogs had all they could do to drag the
komatik with the luggage on it. The humans walked, generally in front
of the dogs, and on snow racquets, to make the trail a bit easier for
the animals. This may sound an interesting way to spend a winter's
day, but after twenty minutes of it you would cry "enough." When we
reached Belvy Bay the ice around the shore was broken into great pans,
but in the middle it looked good. To go round is an endless task, so
we risked crossing. It was easy to get off to the centre, for the big
pans at the edge would float a far greater weight than a komatik and
dogs and three people. The ice in the middle, however, which had
looked so sure from the landwash, proved to be "black"--that is, very,
very thin, though being salt-water ice, it was elastic. It was waving
up and down so as almost to make one seasick, but in its elasticity
lay our only chance of safety. We flung ourselves down at full length
on the komatik to give as broad a surface of resistance as possible,
and what encouragement was given the dogs we did with our voices. Four
miles did we drive over that swaying surface, and though at the time
we were too excited to be nervous, we were glad to reach the "_terra
firma_" of the standing ice edge.
At each place we were received with the most cordial welcome, and
scarcely allowed even to express our gratitude. It was always they who
were so eager to thank us for giving them unasked the "pleasure of
our company." Their reception is always very touching. They put the
best they have before you and will take nothing for their hospitality.
In my various letters to you I have so often taken away the characters
of our dogs that I must tell you of one, just to show that I have not
altered in my devotion to our "true first friend." This dog's name was
"Black," and he lived many years ago at Mistaken Cove. The tales of
his beauty, his cleverness at tricks, and his endurance of
difficulties are still told, but chiefly of his devotion to his
master. After years of this companionship the beloved master died and
was buried in the woods near his lonely little house. Black was
inconsolable. He would eat nothing; he started up at every slightest
noise hoping for the familiar whistle; he haunted the well-worn
woodpath where they had had so many happy days together. Finally he
discovered his master's grave and was found frantically tearing at
the hard earth and heavy stones. Nor would he leave the spot. Food
was brought him daily, but it went untouched. For one whole week he
lay in the wind and weather in the hole he had dug on the grave. There
the children found him on the eighth morning curled up and apparently
asleep. His long quest and vigil were ended, for he had reached the
happy hunting grounds. Who shall say that a beloved hand and voice did
not welcome him home?
_St. Antoine Children's Home (by courtesy)
February 28_
Of one thing I am certain, we must have a new Home, for this house is
not fit for habitation, and it is not nearly large enough. Even after
my recent return from living in the tiny homes of the people which one
would fancy to be far less comfortable, this is forcibly impressed
upon me. We simply cannot go on refusing to take in children who need
its shelter so badly. So please spread this broadcast among the
friends in England. This Home has been enlarged once since it was
built, and yet it is not nearly big enough for our present needs. We
have no nursery, and I only wish you could see the tiny room which has
to do duty for a sewing-room. It is certainly only called "room" by
courtesy, for there is scarcely space to sit down, much less to use a
needle without risk of injury to one's neighbour. The weekly mend
alone, without the making of new things, means now between two and
three hundred garments in addition to the boots, which the boys
repair. As you can imagine, this is no light task and we are often
driven almost distracted. I think the stockings are the worst,
sometimes a hundred pairs to face at once! I fear we must once have
been led into making some rather pointed remarks on this subject, for
later, on going into the sewing-room, we found a slip of printed
paper, cut from a magazine, and bearing the title of an article:
"DON'T SCOLD THE CHILDREN WHEN THEY TEAR THEIR STOCKINGS."
This building rocks like a ship at sea; the roof continually leaks,
the windows are always "coming abroad," and the panes drop out at
"scattered times," while even when shut, the wind whistles through as
if to show his utter disdain of our inhospitable and paltry efforts to
keep him outside. On stormy nights, in spite of closed windows, the
rooms resemble huge snowdrifts. Seven maids with seven mops sweeping
for half a year could never get it clear. The building heaves so much
with the frost that the doors constantly refuse to work, because the
floors have risen, and if they are planed, when the frost disappears,
a yawning chasm confronts you. Our storeroom is so cold in winter that
we put on Arctic furs to fetch in the food, and in summer it is
flooded so that we swim from barrel to barrel as Alice floated in her
pool of tears. But far above all these minor discomforts is the one
overwhelming desire not to have to refuse "one of these little ones."
One's heart aches when one remembers all the money and effort and love
expended on a single child at home, that he may lack nothing to be
prepared in body and spirit to meet the vicissitudes of his coming
life journey. But in this land are hundreds of children, our own blood
and kin, who must face their crushing problems often with bodies
stunted from insufficient nourishment in childhood, and minds unopened
and undeveloped, not through lack of natural ability, but because
opportunity has never come to them. As one looks ahead one sees
clearly what a contribution these eager children could offer their
"day" if only their cousins at home had "the eyes of their
understanding purged to behold things invisible and unseen."
_March 10_
The seals are in! That to you doubtless does not seem the most
engrossing item of news that could be communicated, but that merely
proves what a long road you have to travel. Before the break of day
every man capable of carrying a weapon is out on the ice to try and
get his share of the spoils.
They carry every conceivable sort of gun, but the six-foot
muzzle-loaders are the favourites. These ancient weapons have been
handed down from father to son for generations, and locally go by the
somewhat misleading soubriquet of the "little darlints."
The people call the seals "swiles." There is an old story about a
foreigner who once asked, "How do you spell 'swile'?" The answer the
fisherman gave him was, "We don't spell [carry] 'em. We mostly hauls
'em."
Sea-birds have also come in the "swatches" of open water between the
pans. A gale of wind and sea has broken up the ice, and driven it out
of St. Mien's Bay, which is just round the corner from us. Thousands
of "turr" are there, and the men are reaping many a banquet. A man's
wealth is now gauged by the number of birds which are strung around
the eaves of his house. It is a safe spot, for it keeps the birds
thoroughly frozen, and well out of reach, at this time of year, of the
ever-present dog.