as an example. Under a thoroughly capable and chart-perfect skipper,
Captain English, she made several ineffectual attempts to get to Battle
Harbour through the dense ice-jam before she finally made that roadstead
on June 24. When I met her at Curling to go north, a week late, at the
end of August, she had just come out of a viscous fog of four days’
duration in the Strait of Belle Isle and in that fog she had escaped by
the closest of shaves a collision with a berg that towered above her
till the top of it was lost in the fog. She carried so many passengers,
short-haul or long-distance, that every seat in the dining saloon was
filled with weary folk at night and some paced the decks or sat on the
piles of lathes or the oil-barrels. Lumber and barrels were stored
everywhere, the hold was crammed, and cattle in the prow came and went
mysteriously as the vessel moved into one cove or bight or tickle after
another in the dead of the night or the silver cool of the early
morning. The clatter of the steam-winch with the tune of babies strange
to the sea-trip, the slap and scuffle of the waves on our sheet-iron
sides and the banging of the doors as the vessel writhed in her
discomfort made an orchestra of many tongues and percussions. The boat
was so heavy with her cargo of machinery, oil, lumber, flour ($24 a
barrel at Battle Harbour), cattle and human beings that the deck outside
my stateroom was hardly two feet out of water. There were four of us in
the stateroom, but the population changed almost hourly from port to
port, so that I had barely time to get acquainted with a
fellow-passenger ere I lost him to look after his lobster or fish, or
his missionary labours. One of the ship’s company was going to teach
school at Green Island Cove at the northern tip of Newfoundland. He told
me he would get $275 for ten months’ work and out of it would have to
pay board. Yet out of that salary he meant to put by money to pay for
part of a college education at St. John’s. “How old are you?” I asked.
“Not yet eighteen, sir.”
It is easy to see why Dr. Grenfell’s heart and hand go out in a
practical and helpful sympathy to those whose battle with grim,
unmitigated natural forces and with harsh circumstance is unending. The
commonest question asked of anyone who returns from a visit to the
Labrador is “Why do people live there?” Despite the fog and the cold,
the sea-perils and the stark barrenness of the rocks, the Labrador has
an allurement all its own. It has brought a sturdy explorer like William
B. Cabot of Boston (“Labrador” Cabot) again and again to the rivers and
inlets and the central fastnesses, where he shares the life of the
Montagnais and the Nauscapee Indians; and the same magic has endeared
the Labrador to those who year upon year continue the quest of the cod
and the seal and know no life other than this. Whatever place a man
calls his home is likely to become unreasonably dear to him, however
bare and poor it looks to visitors; and that is the way with the
Labrador. But he who cannot find by sea or land a wild and terrible
beauty in the waters and the luminous skies and the long roll and lift
of the blue hills must be insensible to some of the fairest vistas that
earth has to show. Grenfell and his colleagues do not concede that life
on the Labrador is dull or that the environment is sterile and
monotonous and cheerless. As one of the brave Labrador missionaries, the
Rev. Henry Gordon, has written, “Not only does Labrador rejoice in some
of the finest scenery in North America, but she also possesses a people
of an exceptionally fine type.” Surely it is not right to think of such
a country as a land only of rocks, snows and misery.
XIII
A FEW “PARISHIONERS”
A typical interior gladdened by the Doctor’s presence is this on the
Southern Labrador. A drudge from Nancy Jobble (Lance-au-Diable) is
scrubbing the floor, for the mother is too ill to look to the ways of
her household. The drudge instead of singing is chewing on something
that may be tobacco, paper or gum, and as she slings the brush about
heartlessly she gives furtive eyes and ears to the visitors. The walls
are bestuck with staled and yellowed newspapers. There are no pictures
or books. There is a wooden bench before the linoleum-covered table, on
which are loaves of bread, ill-baked. There is a stove, of the
“Favourite” brand with kettle and teapot simmering. A tarnished
alarm-clock from Ansonia, a mirror, a wash-stand, shelves with china,
tin cans and shreds of bread, a baby’s crib, a rocking-chair and two
more benches forlornly complete the inventory. There is nothing green in
sight from the besmirched windows but grass and people.
A telegraph operator was reading a volume of the addresses of Russell
Conwell when we entered his not overtasked laboratory. The book bore the
title “How to Get Rich Honestly.” “’Fraid I’ll never get any further
than reading about it!” exclaimed the man of the keys and wires. Dr.
Grenfell took the book and presently became engrossed in the famous
address called “Acres of Diamonds.” It seemed to him the sort of
literature to fire the ambition of his neighbours under the Northern
Lights, with its instances of those who made their way defiant of the
odds and in spite of all opposition.
A very young minister at another Labrador watering-place said to the
Doctor: “You needn’t leave any of your books here. I’m not interested in
libraries. I’m only interested in the spiritual welfare of the people.”
A run of six miles by power-boat across Lewis Inlet took us to Fox
Harbour and the house of Uncle George Holley. In recent years the
power-boat, even with gasoline at the prevailing high prices, has become
the fisherman’s taxicab or tin Lizzie, and Oh! the difference to him. He
bobs and prances out over the war-dance of the waves with his barrels
and boxes easily, where once it was a mighty toiling with the sweeps to
make his way. The run across the inlet went swiftly and surely past an
iceberg white as an angel’s wing though with the malign suggestion of
the devil behind it: and there were plenty of chances to take
photographs from every possible angle.
Uncle George had on the stage a skinned seal, some whalemeat, salted cod
and a few barrels of salmon. His wife showed us a tiny garden with
cabbages, lettuce, rhubarb, radishes and “greens.” One year, she said,
she had a barrel of potatoes. Indoors she managed to raise balsam,
bachelor’s buttons and nasturtiums. Nowhere in the world do flowers mean
more to those that plant them. Constantly there comes to mind H. C.
Brunner’s poem about a geranium upon a window-sill: for the flowers
which it needs incessant care to keep from the nipping frost come to be
regarded as not merely friends but members of the family. Uncle George,
a fine, patriarchal type, told vividly how with a dog whip nine fathoms
long the expert hand could cut off the neck of a glass bottle without
upsetting the bottle, and take the bowl from a man’s pipe or the buttons
off his coat. No wonder the huskies slink under the houses when they see
a stranger coming.
The winter of 1918-19 was especially terrible—or “wonderful” as would
be said here—because of the visitation of the “flu.” Conditions were
bad enough in Newfoundland, but in Labrador the “liveyers” (those who
remain the year round) fought their battles in a hopeless isolation
illumined by heroic self-abnegation on the part of a tiny handful of
persons.
When spring released the Labrador Coast from the grip of the ice, and
the tragic tale of the winter was told, the Newfoundland Government
dispatched the _Terra Nova_ (Scott’s Antarctic vessel) to the aid of the
afflicted. Then news filtered out to the world of plague conditions
during that terrible winter more dreadful than those which De Foe has
chronicled. While reading the gruesome details, one is reminded of the
long, lonely and hopeless fight of the early Jamestown colony against
sickness and starvation. Throughout the bitter months the Red Death
stalked its dread way up and down the Coast, with almost no doctors,
nurses or medicines to check the disease. Whole families were stricken,
the living were too weak to bury the dead or even to fight off the gaunt
dogs that hovered hungrily about the houses; and hamlets were wiped out
while neighbouring villages were unable to send aid.
A few sentences from the diary of Henry Gordon, the brave missionary at
Cartwright, on Sandwich Bay, will suffice to show what a hideous winter
his people passed through. Of this man Dr. Grenfell said to me: “Instead
of a stick with a collar on it we have a man with a soul in him.” He is
always laughing—incurably an optimist, and a great Boy Scout leader.
The following are condensed excerpts.
“Wednesday, Oct. 30, 1918. Reached Cartwright 8 a.m. Mail-boat had
brought ‘the great Plague’ and nearly half the population was down with
it.
“Thursday, Oct. 31. Nearly everybody down now.
“Nov. 1. Whole households stretched inanimate on floors, unable even to
feed themselves or keep fires going.
“Nov. 2. Feeling rotten. Head like a bladderful of wind.
“Nov. 7. Busy all a.m. arranging graves and coffins.
“Nov. 8. Gale N. E. with snow-storms.
“Nov. 17. Two of bodies too much doubled up to put in coffin.
“Nov. 21. Will Leaming in from Indian Harbour with news that ten are
dead at North River still unburied and only three coffins. The rest are
too sick and dismayed to help.
“Nov. 22. (At North River). Some had lain in their beds three weeks and
the stench was appalling. Old Mrs. L. W., aged 71, only survivor of
five, lived alone for a fortnight with four dead. No fire, no wood, only
ice, which she thawed under her arms.
“Nov. 26. Number burials now totals 26. Population little over 100.
“Dec. 14. Find five little orphans living alone in a deserted house in a
deserted cove, bread still frozen.
“Dec. 19. 12 dead in North River out of population of 21.
“Dec. 25. (Christmas Day). Service 10.30. Only six communicants, but
considerable ‘Communion of saints.’
“Jan. 1, 1919. (At Cape Porcupine, in Herbert Emb’s one-room house). ‘A
sort of damp earthy smell met one on entering, but thanks to frost, body
was not so bad as expected. More like mouldering clay than anything.
Right on his side was his little girl, actually frozen on to him, so
that bodies came off the bunk in one piece.’
“Jan. 3. Grave-blasting.
“Jan. 8. Total deaths: Cartwright, 15; Paradise, 20; Separation Point,
7; North River, 13; Strandshore, 9; Grady, 1; Hare Islands, 4;
Sandhills, 4; Boulter’s Rock, 5; North, 12.”
These do not seem large figures, but in settlements of half a dozen
houses or less they represent a very large proportion of the
inhabitants.
News of the armistice with Germany did not reach Mr. Gordon until
January 9, which shows how far from the world was this region within a
hundred miles of the summer hospital at Battle Harbour.
It is to be noted that nearly all the children who died perished of
starvation, because their elders could no longer feed them and the
“loaf” was too frozen to be eaten.
The Eskimo settlements suffered still more grievously. The bodies were
buried at sea. Dogs were eating the bodies, and had to be shot.
Sometimes the survivors were too weak to drive the dogs from the dead
and the dying.
Hebron was wiped out. At Okkak 200 died of 267, and on August 15 there
were four widows and two little girls left, who were waiting to be taken
away. Nain was not so hard hit, but it is said that forty perished out
of several hundred. Zoar and Ramah had already passed out of existence
before the “flu” came. It is estimated that the resident Eskimo
population on the coast, numbering 600 to 700, was cut nearly in half.
The people seem to think that Dr. Grenfell can accomplish miracles. One
is reminded of the words of the sister of Lazarus, “Lord, if thou hadst
been here, my brother had not died.”
“Richard Dempster, our mail-carrier,” said good Parson Richards, of
Flower’s Cove, “owes his life to the Doctor. Something had infected his
knee. The poison spread to his hip. He wouldn’t have lived twelve hours
if the Doctor hadn’t made seven incisions in his right leg with his
pocket-knife to let out the poisoned blood.
[Illustration: HAPPY DAYS AT THE ORPHANAGE, ST. ANTHONY.]
“Once when I was travelling with him, at Pine’s Cove we found a family
had left because the woman had seen a ghost. The Doctor prayed with her,
and offered to go and live in the house himself to prove that she was
the victim of an illusion. At Eddy’s Cove there was hard glitter ice
which would have cut the dog’s paws. We thought we couldn’t go on. While
we debated what to do there came a snowfall that spread the ice with a
glorious soft blanket, ideal for travel. That’s just the way Providence
always seems to favour the Doctor when he goes abroad.
“That man never came to the parsonage and went without leaving me with
the desire to do better and be better. Every single time it was the
same.
“Once we were on the go with the dogs and the komatik four days from St.
Anthony to Cricket (Griguet). Much of the time the Doctor had to run
beside the komatik. He struck out a new way, deep in snow. ‘Don’t you
ever get tired, Doctor?’ I asked. ‘I don’t know that I ever was tired in
my life,’ was his answer.
“A day or two after that dreadful experience on the ice-pan which he
described in a book, he was at Cricket, and I went to see him. He was
still suffering from the effects of the frost-bite. ‘Will you come to
the mass meeting of the churches tonight?’ I said. He didn’t hesitate a
moment. ‘Yes—send a dog-team and I’ll come.’ He not merely came but
delivered an address of an hour’s duration, and I never heard him speak
with greater fervour. He seemed spiritualized by the experience through
which he had so recently passed.”
XIV
NEEDS, BIG AND LITTLE
It is high time to give Dr. Grenfell’s great work the broad, sure
underpinning of a liberal endowment. It may be true that “an institution
is the lengthened shadow of one man”; but the one-man power of
Grenfell’s personality is not immortal, and the work is too important to
be allowed to lapse or to languish when he no longer directs, inspires
and energizes all. To endow the work now, when many concerns of lesser
moment are claiming their millions of dollars and their thousands of
devotees is to relieve the Doctor of the ordeal of stumping the United
States, Canada and the British Isles to keep his great plant going.
Despite the volunteer assistants, despite the aid of good men and women
banded in associations or toiling in groups or as individuals at points
far from Battle Harbour and St. Anthony, despite the economy practised
everywhere and always, there is ever a need, a haunting need, of funds;
and a few insular politicians and traders may talk as elaborately as
they please about Grenfell as an interloper, with a task that does not
belong to him, but as long as Newfoundland does not provide a sufficient
subsidy, most of the money must come from somewhere off the island. I
have heard some “little-islanders” say that Dr. Grenfell ought to get
out, and that Newfoundland should take over his whole business, but as
long as Newfoundland does not move to that end, and there is a woeful
want of doctoring and nursing at any outport on the map, somebody with
the flaming zeal of this crusader has a place. Grenfell is doing the
work not of one man but of a hundred. Could his cured patients have
their say, there would be no doubt about that endowment. If grateful
words were dollars, Grenfell would be a multi-millionaire.
It should not be necessary to explain in circumstantial detail the
constant and pressing need of funds to carry on an enterprise that
covers so large a territory and involves so many and such various
activities. A chain of hospitals and dispensaries, manned in large part
by eager and devoted volunteers, an orphanage, an industrial school, a
fleet of boats—including the schooner _George B. Cluett_—a Seamen’s
Institute, a number of dwellings for the staff personnel, the supplies
of food and coal and surgical apparatus and medical equipment—all these
items impose a burden on the overtaxed time and strength of the Doctor
so considerable that it is not even humane or moral to expect him to
speak two or three times a day as he does when he ought to be taking a
well-earned vacation. Countless thousands are eager to hear the man
himself describe his work, and there is usually a throng whenever and
wherever he appears, but to let him wear himself out in appealing for
the means to carry on is a waste of the enormous man-power of a great
leader of the age. He does not cavil or repine, but he ought to be saved
from his own willingness to overdo.
“I never put up a building without having the funds in hand,” he
declared. “But when it comes to work—I believe in beginning first and
asking afterwards. The support will somehow come, if there is faith, but
faint-heartedness means paralysis of effort.”
One of the most important producers and consumers of all Dr. Grenfell’s
institutions is the King George V. Seamen’s Institute at St. John’s. The
cornerstone of the four-story brick building was laid in 1911. Sir Ralph
Williams (the Governor), Bowring Brothers, Job Brothers, Harvey and
Company, MacPherson Brothers and other loyal and forward-looking
citizens got behind the plan: and when the stone was swung into place by
wire from Buckingham Palace as King George V. pressed the button, the
sum of $175,000 was in hand. The site contributed by Bowring Brothers
was valued at $13,000.
The enumeration of beds occupied, meals served, baths taken, games
played, books loaned, films shown and lectures heard does not begin to
tell the story. Fishermen and sailormen ashore are traditionally
forlorn. Men from the outports who drift into St. John’s are like
country lads who come wide-eyed to a great city. It is not morally so
bad for them as it was ere prohibition came and clamped the lid upon the
gin-mills. But still, these are lonely men, friendless men, with very
little money: and the Institute has a helping hand out for them, to
befriend them from the moment they set foot on shore. Moreover, there is
a dormitory given over to the use of outport girls: since it is seen
that hard as things may be for Jack ashore they are harder yet for
sister Jill, who knows even less of the great round world outside the
bay and needs even more protection than her brother.
The Institute at last is able to show a small balance on the right side
of the ledger. Since the first thought of those who ran it has been
service, they are satisfied to come out only a little better than even.
No charge of graft or profiteering lies here: and those who are fed and
housed and warmed find it “a little bit of heaven” to be made so
comfortable at an expense so small.
At the start, less than a decade ago, there were croakers who said there
would be but a slim and scattering patronage: but now nearly all the
beds are in use every night. In the dread influenza year, 1918, the
Institute was invaluable as an Emergency Hospital, which treated 267
patients. The city hospital at St. John’s is small and always
overcrowded. If the Institute had not been available the results of the
epidemic would have been still more terrible. When in February, 1918,
the _Florizel_ was wrecked on the coast between St. John’s and Cape Race
the survivors were brought here, and the Institute also prepared the
bodies of the dead for burial. And on other occasions it has done good
service.
Demobilized men of the Army and Navy coming into town from the outports
use the building as a clubhouse.
Since the high cost of living has not spared Newfoundland, the rate for
the young women who are permanent boarders has had to be raised to $4.00
a week. In parts of Newfoundland that is a good deal of money, but it is
not much compared with what these girls would have to pay in the absence
of the Institute.
The successful operation of the Institute is an outstanding
object-lesson, and a source of particular satisfaction to its founder
and chief promoter. It has triumphantly answered and silenced the
objections of those who at the start declared that the only possible
result would be calamitous failure. It has survived the shock of the
discovery that some of its earlier administrators were unworthy of their
charge; it has outlived the era of struggle and set-back; it has so
clearly proved its place and its meaning in the community where it is
established that if it were destroyed the merchants themselves would be
prompt to undertake its replacement. It is as impressive a monument as
any to the enduring worth of the devoted labours of Wilfred Thomason
Grenfell, and as conspicuous a proof as could be offered that his great
work by land and sea deserves an Endowment Fund.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Obvious punctuation and typesetting errors have been corrected without
note. Some illustrations have been moved slightly to keep paragraphs
intact.
[End of _With Grenfell on the Labrador_ by Fullerton Waldo]