THE LURE OF THE LABRADOR
Twenty years have passed away since that day, and a thousand more
important affairs which have occurred in the meantime have faded from
my memory; but still its events stand out clear and sharp. The large
and lofty island, its top covered with green verdure, so wonderful a
landmark from the sea, its peaks capped with the fleecy mist of early
morning, rose in a setting of the purest azure blue. For the first
time I saw the faces of its ruddy cliffs, their ledges picked out with
the homes of myriad birds. Its feet were bathed in the dark, rich
green of the Atlantic water, edged by the line of pure white breakers,
where the gigantic swell lazily hurled immeasurable mountains of water
against its titanic bastions, evoking peals of sound like thunder from
its cavernous recesses--a very riot of magnificence. The great schools
of whales, noisily slapping the calm surface of the sea with their
huge tails as in an _abandon_ of joy, dived and rose, and at times
threw the whole of their mighty carcasses right out of water for a
bath in the glorious morning sunshine. The shoals of fish everywhere
breaching the water, and the silver streaks which flashed beneath our
bows as we lazed along, suggested that the whole vast ocean was too
small to hold its riches.
When we realized that practically no man had ever lived there, and few
had even seen it, it seemed to overwhelm us, coming as we did from the
crowded Island of our birth, where notices not to trespass haunted
even the dreams of the average man.
A serried rank of range upon range of hills, reaching north and south
as far as the eye could see from the masthead, was rising above our
horizon behind a very surfeit of islands, bewildering the minds of men
accustomed to our English and North Sea coast-lines.
In a ship just the size of the famous Matthew, we had gone west,
following almost the exact footsteps of the great John Cabot when just
four hundred years before he had fared forth on his famous venture of
discovery. We seemed now almost able to share the exhilaration which
only such experiences can afford the human soul, and the vast
potential resources for the blessing of humanity of this great land
still practically untouched.
At last we came to anchor among many schooners in a wonderful natural
harbour called Domino Run, so named because the Northern fleets all
pass through it on their way North and South. Had we been painted
scarlet, and flown the Black Jack instead of the Red Ensign, we could
not have attracted more attention. Flags of greeting were run up to
all mastheads, and boats from all sides were soon aboard inquiring
into the strange phenomenon. Our object explained, we soon had calls
for a doctor, and it has been the experience of almost every visitor
to the coast from that day to this that he is expected to have a
knowledge of medicine.
[Illustration: Cape Uivuk
THE LABRADOR COAST]
[Illustration: The Tickle Anchorage
THE LABRADOR COAST]
One impression made on my mind that day undoubtedly influenced all my
subsequent actions. Late in the evening, when the rush of visitors was
largely over, I noticed a miserable bunch of boards, serving as a
boat, with only a dab of tar along its seams, lying motionless a
little way from us. In it, sitting silent, was a half-clad,
brown-haired, brown-faced figure. After long hesitation, during which
time I had been watching him from the rail, he suddenly asked:
"Be you a real doctor?"
"That's what I call myself," I replied.
"Us hasn't got no money," he fenced, "but there's a very sick man
ashore, if so be you'd come and see him."
A little later he led me to a tiny sod-covered hovel, compared with
which the Irish cabins were palaces. It had one window of odd
fragments of glass. The floor was of pebbles from the beach; the earth
walls were damp and chilly. There were half a dozen rude wooden bunks
built in tiers around the single room, and a group of some six
neglected children, frightened by our arrival, were huddled together
in one corner. A very sick man was coughing his soul out in the
darkness of a lower bunk, while a pitiably covered woman gave him cold
water to sip out of a spoon. There was no furniture except a small
stove with an iron pipe leading through a hole in the roof.
My heart sank as I thought of the little I could do for the sufferer
in such surroundings. He had pneumonia, a high fever, and was probably
tubercular. The thought of our attractive little hospital on board at
once rose to my mind; but how could one sail away with this husband
and father, probably never to bring him back. Advice, medicine, a few
packages of food were only temporizing. The poor mother could never
nurse him and tend the family. Furthermore, their earning season,
"while the fish were in," was slipping away. To pray for the man, and
with the family, was easy, but scarcely satisfying. A hospital and a
trained nurse was the only chance for this bread-winner--and neither
was available.
I called in a couple of months later as we came South before the
approach of winter. Snow was already on the ground. The man was dead
and buried; there was no provision whatever for the family, who were
destitute, except for the hollow mockery of a widow's grant of twenty
dollars a year. This, moreover, had to be taken up in goods at a truck
store, less debts _if_ she owed any.
Among the nine hundred patients that still show on the records of that
long-ago voyage, some stand out more than others for their peculiar
pathos and their utter helplessness. I shall never forget one poor
Eskimo. In firing a cannon to salute the arrival of the Moravian
Mission ship, the gun exploded prematurely, blowing off both the man's
arms below the elbows. He had been lying on his back for a fortnight,
the pathetic stumps covered only with far from sterile rags dipped in
cold water. We remained some days, and did all we could for his
benefit; but he too joined the great host that is forever "going
west," for want of what the world fails to give them.
It is not given to every member of our profession to enjoy the
knowledge that he alone stands between the helpless and suffering or
death, for in civilization modern amenities have almost annihilated
space and time, and the sensations of the Yankee at the Court of King
Arthur are destroyed by the realization of competitors, "just as
good," even if it often does leave one conscious of limitations. The
successful removal of a molar which has given torture for weeks in a
dentistless country, gains one as much gratitude as the amputation of
a limb. One mere boy came to me with necrosis of one side of his lower
jaw due to nothing but neglected toothache. It had to be dug out from
the new covering of bone which had grown up all around it. The
whimsical expression of his lop-sided face still haunts me.
Deformities went untreated. The crippled and blind halted through
life, victims of what "the blessed Lord saw best for them." The
torture of an ingrowing toe-nail, which could be relieved in a few
minutes, had incapacitated one poor father for years. Tuberculosis and
rickets carried on their evil work unchecked. Preventable poverty was
the efficient handmaid of these two latter diseases.
There was also much social work to be done in connection with the
medical. Education in every one of its branches--especially public
health--was almost nonexistent--as were many simple social amenities
which might have been so easily induced.
At one village a woman with five children asked us if we could marry
her to her husband. They had never been together when a parson
happened along, and they now lived in a lonely cove three miles away.
This seemed a genuine case of distress; and as it happened a parson
was taking a passage with us, we sent two of our crew over in a boat
to round up the groom. Apparently he was not at all anxious, but being
a very small man and she a large woman, he discreetly acquiesced. The
wedding was held on board our ship, every one entering into the spirit
of the unusual occasion. The main hold was crammed with guests, bells
were rung and flags flown, guns fired, and at night distress rockets
were sent up. We kept in touch with the happy couple for years, till
once more they moved away to try their luck elsewhere.
Obviously the coast offered us work that would not be done unless we
did it. Here was real need along any line on which one could labour,
in a section of our own Empire, where the people embodied all our best
sea traditions. They exhibited many of the attractive characteristics
which, even when buried beneath habits and customs the outcome of
their environment, always endear men of the sea to the genuine
Anglo-Saxon. They were uncomplaining, optimistic, splendidly
resourceful, cheerful and generous--and after all in one sense soap
and water only makes the outside of the platter clean.
I confess that we had greatly enjoyed the adventure _qua_ adventure.
Mysterious fjords which wound out of sight into the fastnesses of
unknown mountains, and which were entirely uncharted, fairly shouted
an invitation to enter and discover what was round the next corner.
Islands by the hundred, hitherto never placed on any map, challenged
one's hydrographic skill. Families of strange birds, which came
swinging seaward as the season advanced, suggested a virgin field for
hunting. Berries and flowering plants, as excellent as they were
unfamiliar, appealed for exploration. Great boulders perched on
perilous peaks, torn and twisted strata, with here and there raised
beaches, and great outcrops of black trap-rock piercing through red
granite cliffs in giant vertical seams--all piqued one's curiosity to
know the geology of this unknown land. Some stone arrow-heads and
knives, brought to me by a fisherman, together with the memories that
the Norse Vikings and their competitors on the scroll of discovery
made their first landfall on this the nearest section of the American
coast to Europe, excited one's curiosity to know more of these shores.
The dense growth of evergreen trees abounding in every river valley,
and the exquisite streams with trout and salmon and seals attracted
one whose familiarity with sport and forests was inseparably connected
with notices to trespassers.
It only wanted an adventure such as we had one day while sailing up a
fjord on a prosaic professional call, when we upset our cutter and had
to camp for the night, to give spice to our other experiences, and
made us wish to return another year, better equipped, and with a more
competent staff.
I am far from being the only person from the outside world who has
experienced what Wallace describes as "the Lure of the Labrador." It
was a genuine surprise to me one morning to find ice on deck--a scale
of sparkling crystals most beautifully picking out the water-line of
our little craft. It was only then that I realized that October had
come. The days, so full of incident, had passed away like ships in the
night. Whither away was the question? We could not stay even though we
felt the urgent call to remain. So "Heigho for the southward bar" and
a visit to St. John's to try and arouse interest in the new-discovered
problems, before we should once more let go our stern lines and be
bowling homeward before the fall nor'westers to dear old England.
Home-going craft had generously carried our story before us to the
city of St. John's. The Board of Trade commended our effort. The
papers had written of the new phenomenon; the politicians had not
refrained from commendation. His Excellency the Governor made our path
plain by calling a meeting in Government House, where the following
resolution was passed:
"That this meeting, representing the principal merchants and traders
carrying on the fisheries, especially on the Labrador coast, and
others interested in the welfare of this colony, desires to tender its
warmest thanks to the directors of the Deep-Sea Mission for sending
their hospital ship Albert to visit the settlement on the Labrador
coast.
"Much of our fishing industry is carried on in regions beyond the
ordinary reach of medical aid, or of charity, and it is with the
deepest sense of gratitude that this meeting learns of the amount of
medical and surgical work done....
"This meeting also desires to express the hope that the directors may
see their way to continue the work thus begun, and should they do so,
they may be assured of the earnest cooperation of all classes of this
community."
When at last we said good-bye on our homeward voyage, our cabins were
loaded with generous souvenirs for the journey, and no king on his
throne was happier than every man of the crew of the good ship Albert.
Our report to the Council in London, followed by the resolution sent
by the Newfoundland Committee, induced the Society to repeat the
experiment on a larger scale the following spring. Thus, with two
young doctors, Elliott Curwen of Cambridge and Arthur Bobardt from
Australia, and two nurses, Miss Cawardine and Miss Williams, we again
set out the following June.
The voyage was uneventful except that I was nearly left behind in
mid-Atlantic. While playing cricket on deck our last ball went over
the side, and I after it, shouting to the helmsman to tack back. This
he did, but I failed to cut him off the first time, as he got a bit
rattled. However, we rescued the ball.
We had chosen two islands two hundred miles apart for cottage
hospitals, one at Battle Harbour, on the north side of the entrance of
the St. Lawrence (Straits of Belle Isle), and the other at Indian
Harbour, out in the Atlantic at the mouth of the great Hamilton Inlet.
Both places were the centres of large fisheries, and were the
"bring-ups" for numberless schooners of the Labrador fleet on their
way North and South. The first, a building already half finished, was
donated by a local fishery firm by the name of Baine, Johnston and
Company. This was quickly made habitable, and patients were admitted
under Dr. Bobardt's care. The second building, assembled at St.
John's, was shipped by the donors, who were the owners of the Indian
Harbour fishery, Job Brothers and Company. Owing to difficulties in
landing, this building was not completed and ready for use until the
following year, so Dr. Curwen took charge of the hospital ship Albert,
and I cruised as far north as Okkak (lat. 57 deg.) in the Princess May, a
midget steam launch, eight feet wide, with a cook and an engineer. As
there was no coal obtainable in the North, we used wood, and her
fire-box being small the amount of cutting entailed left a permanent
impression on our biceps.
A friend from Ireland had presented this little boat, which I found
lying up on the Chester Race-Course, near our home on the Sands of
Dee. We had repaired her and steamed her through the canal into the
Mersey, where, somewhat to our humiliation, she had been slung up onto
the deck of an Allan liner for her trans-Atlantic passage, as if she
were nothing but an extra hand satchel. Nor was our pride restored
when on her arrival it was found that her funnel was missing among the
general baggage in the hold. We had to wait in St. John's for a new
one before starting on our trip North. The close of the voyage proved
a fitting corollary. In crossing the Straits of Belle Isle, the last
boat to leave the Labrador, we ran short of fuel, and had to burn our
cabin-top to make the French shore, having also lost our compass
overboard. Here we delayed repairing and refitting so long that the
authorities in St. John's became alarmed and despatched their mail
steamer in search of us. I still remember my astonishment, when, on
boarding the steamer, the lively skipper, a very tender-hearted father
of a family, threw both arms around me with a mighty hug and
exclaimed, "Thank God, we all thought you were gone. A schooner picked
up your flagpole at sea." Poor fellow, he was a fine Christian seaman,
but only a year or two later he perished with his large steamer while
I still rove this rugged coast.
That summer we visited the stations of the Moravian Brethren, who were
kindness personified to us. Their stations, five in number, dated back
over a hundred and thirty years, yet they had never had a doctor among
them. It would scarcely be modest for me to protest that they were the
worse off for that circumstance. Each station was well armed with
homoeopathic pills, and at least those do no harm; while one old
German house-father had really performed with complete success
craniotomy and delivery of a child _en morcellement_, in the case of a
colleague's wife. During our stay they gave us plenty of work among
their Eskimos, and were good enough to report most favourably of our
work to their home Committee.
As there was no chart of any use for the coast north of Hopedale, few
if any corrections having been made in the topographic efforts of the
long late Captain Cook, of around-the-world reputation, one of the
Brethren, Mr. Christopher Schmidt, joined the Princess May to help me
find their northern stations among the plethora of islands which
fringe the coast in that vicinity. Never in my life had I expected any
journey half so wonderful. We travelled through endless calm fjords,
runs, tickles, bays, and straits without ever seeing the open sea, and
with hardly a ripple on the surface. We passed high mountains and
lofty cliffs, crossed the mouths of large rivers, left groves of
spruce and fir and larches on both sides of us, and saw endless birds,
among them the Canada goose, eider duck, surf scoters, and many
commoner sea-fowl. As it was both impossible and dangerous to proceed
after dark, when no longer able to run we would go ashore and gather
specimens of the abundant and beautiful sub-arctic flora, and
occasionally capture a bird or a dish of trout to help out our
diminutive larder.
[Illustration: ESKIMO WOMAN AND BABY]
[Illustration: ESKIMO MAN]
Among the Eskimos I found a great deal of tuberculosis and much eye
trouble. Around the Moravian Mission stations wooden houses had
largely replaced the former "tubiks," or skin tents, which were moved
as occasion required and so provided for sanitation. These wooden huts
were undrained, dark and dirty to a remarkable degree. No water supply
was provided, and the spaces between the houses were simply
indescribable garbage heaps, presided over by innumerable dogs. The
average life was very short and infant mortality high. The best for
which we could hope in the way of morals among these people was that a
natural unmorality was some offset to the existing conditions. The
features of the native life which appealed most to us were the
universal optimism, the laughing good-nature and contentment, and the
Sunday cleanliness of the entire congregation which swarmed into the
chapel service, a welcome respite from the perennial dirt of the week
days. Moreover, nearly all had been taught to read and write in
Eskimo, though there is no literature in that language to read, except
such books as have been translated by the Moravian Brethren. At that
time a strict policy of teaching no English had been adopted. Words
lacking in the language, like "God," "love," etc., were substituted by
German words. Nearly every Eskimo counted "ein, zwei, drei." In one of
my lectures, on returning to England, I mentioned that as the Eskimos
had never seen a lamb or a sheep either alive or in a picture, the
Moravians, in order to offer them an intelligible and appealing
simile, had most wisely substituted the kotik, or white seal, for the
phrase "the Lamb of God." One old lady in my audience must have felt
that the good Brethren were tampering unjustifiably with Holy Writ,
for the following summer, from the barrels of clothing sent out to
the Labrador, was extracted a dirty, distorted, and much-mangled and
wholly sorry-looking woolly toy lamb. Its _raison d'etre_ was a
mystery until we read the legend carefully pinned to one dislocated
leg, "Sent in order that the heathen may know better."
Their love for music and ability to do part-playing and singing also
greatly impressed us, and we spent many evenings enjoying their brass
bands and their Easter and Christmas carols. We made some records of
these on our Edison phonograph, and they were overpowered with joy
when they heard their own voices coming back to them from the machine.
The magic lantern also proved exceedingly popular, and several tried
to touch the pictures and see if they could not hold them. We were
also able to show some hastily made lantern slides of themselves, and
I shall never forget their joyful excitement. The following season, in
giving them some lantern views, we chanced to show a slide of an old
Eskimo woman who had died during the winter. The subsequent commotion
caused among the "little people" was unintelligible to us until one of
the Moravian Brethren explained that they thought her spirit had taken
visible form and returned to her own haunts.
I happened to be in the gardens at Nain when a northerly air made it
feel chilly and the thermometer stood only a little above freezing. A
troop of Eskimo women came out to cover up the potatoes. Every row of
potatoes is covered with arched sticks and long strips of canvas along
them. A huge roll of sacking is kept near each row and the whole is
drawn over and the potatoes are tucked in bed for the night. I could
not resist the temptation to lift the bedclothes and shake hands and
say good-night to one of the nearest plants, whereat the merry little
people went off into convulsions of laughter.
At Hopedale there was a large Danish ship with over six hundred tons
of cargo for the new Moravian buildings. The Brethren do not build as
we are doing from coast material. In order to save time and also to
have more substantial buildings, they are cut out and built in
Germany, photographed, and each piece marked. Then they are taken to
pieces, shipped, and sent out here for erection.
Some years ago in Germany, when the Socialists were wearing beards and
mustaches, all respectable people used to shave. Therefore the
missionaries being Germans insisted on the Eskimos shaving as they
did. The result is that at one store at least a stock of ancient
razors are left on hand, for now neither missionary nor Eskimo shaves
in the inhospitable climate of this country. A small stock of these
razors was, therefore, left on my account in some graves from which
one or two Eskimos were good enough to go and get us a few ancient
stone implements. It is a marvellous thing how superstition still
clings around the very best of native Christian communities.
The Moravian Mission is a trading mission. This trading policy in some
aspects is in its favour. It is unquestionably part of a message of
real love to a brother to put within his reach at reasonable rates
those adjuncts of civilized life that help to make less onerous his
hard lot. Trade, however, is always a difficult form of charity, and
the barter system, common to this coast, being in vogue at the
Moravian Mission stations also, practically every Eskimo was in debt
to them. In reality this caused a vicious circle, for it encouraged
directly the outstanding fault of the Eskimo, his readiness to leave
the morrow to care for itself so long as he does not starve to-day.
Like a race of children, they need the stimulus of necessity to make
them get out and do their best while the opportunity exists. In the
past twenty-six years I have made many voyages to one and another of
the stations of the Brethren, and have learned to love them all very
sincerely as individuals, though their mission policies are their own
and not mine.
I remember once in Nain the slob ice had already made ballicaters and
the biting cold of winter so far north had set in with all its vigour.
There was a heavy sea and a gale of wind. One of two boats which had
been out all day had not come in. The sea was so rough and the wind so
strong that the occupants of the first boat could not face it, and so
had run in under the land and walked all the way round, towing their
boat by a long line from the shore. Night came on and the second boat
had not appeared. Next morning the Nain folk knew that some accident
must have happened. Some men reported that the evening before they had
seen through a glass the boat trying to beat against the storm, and
then disappear. The Eskimos gathered together to see what could be
done and then decided that it was kismet--and went their way. The
following evening a tiny light was seen on the far shore of the
bay--some one must be alive there. There was no food or shelter there,
and it was obvious that help was needed. The gale was still blowing in
fury and the sea was as rough as ever, and Eskimos and missionaries
decided that in their unseaworthy boats they could do nothing. There
was one dissentient voice--Brother Schmidt; and he went and rescued
them. One was nearly spent. When their boat had capsized, one man, a
woman, and a lad had been drowned, but two men had succeeded in
getting into their kajaks and floated off when the disaster happened.
[Illustration: ESKIMO GIRLS]
With October came the necessity for returning South, and the long
dark nights spent at the little fishing stations as we journeyed from
place to place proved all too short. The gatherings for lantern
meetings, for simple services, for spinning yarns, together with
medicine and such surgery as we could accomplish under the
circumstances, made every moment busy and enjoyable. One outstanding
feature, however, everywhere impressed an Englishman--the absolute
necessity for some standard medium of exchange. Till one has seen the
truck system at work, its evil effects in enslaving and demoralizing
the poor are impossible to realize.
All the length and breadth of the coast, the poorer people would show
me their "settling up" as they called their account, though many never
got as far as having any "settling up" given them--so they lived and
died in debt to their merchant. They never knew the independence of a
dollar in their pockets and the consequent incentive and value of
thrift.
It was incredible to me that even large concerns like the Hudson Bay
Company would not pay in cash for valuable furs, and that so many
dealers in the necessities of life should be still able to hold free
men in economic bondage. It seemed a veritable chapter from "Through
the Looking Glass," to hear the "grocer" and "haberdasher" talking of
"my people," meaning their patrons, and holding over them the whip of
refusal to sell them necessities in their hour of need if at any time
they dealt with outsiders, however much to their advantage such a
course might be.
This fact was first impressed upon me in an odd way. Early in the
summer an Eskimo had come aboard the hospital ship with a bear skin
and a few other furs to sell. We had not only been delighted with the
chance to buy them, but had spread them all around the cabin and
taken a picture of him in the middle. Later in the season, while
showing my photograph album to a trader, he had suddenly remarked,
"Why, what's ---- doing here?"
"Selling me some beautiful furs," I replied.
"Oh! was he?" said the man. "I'll make him sing for selling the furs
for which I supplied him."
It was no salve to his fretfulness when I assured him that I had paid
in good English gold, and that his "dealer" would be as honest with
the money as the system had made him. But the trader knew that the
truck system creates slippery, tricky men; and the fisherman openly
declares war on the merchant, making the most of his few opportunities
to outwit his opponent.
A few years later a man brought a silver fox skin aboard my ship, just
such a one as I had been requested by an English lady to secure for
her. As fulfilling such a request would involve me in hostilities
(which, however, I do not think were useless), I asked the man, who
was wretchedly poor, if he owed the skin to the trader.
"I am in debt," he replied, "but they will only allow me eight dollars
off my account for this skin, and I want to buy some food."
"Very well," I answered. "If you will promise to go at once and pay
eight dollars off your debt, I will give you eight gold sovereigns for
this skin."
To this he agreed, and faithfully carried out the agreement--while the
English lady scored a bargain, and I a very black mark in the books of
my friend the trader.
On another occasion my little steamer had temporarily broken down, and
to save time I had journeyed on in the jolly-boat, leaving the cook to
steer the vessel after me. I wanted to visit a very poor family, one
of whose eight children I had taken to hospital for bone tuberculosis
the previous year, and to whom the Mission had made a liberal grant
of warm clothing. As the steamer had not come along by night, I had to
sleep in the tiny one-roomed shack which served as a home. True, since
it stood on the edge of the forest, there was little excuse that it
was no larger; but the father, a most excellent, honest, and faithful
worker, was obviously discouraged. He had not nearly enough proper
food for his family; clothing was even more at a discount; tools with
which to work were almost as lacking as in a cave man's dwelling; the
whole family was going to pieces from sheer discouragement. The
previous winter on the opposite bank of the same river, called Big
River, a neighbour had in desperation sent his wife and eldest boy out
of the house, killed his young family, and then shot himself.
When night came five of the children huddled together for warmth in
one bed, and the parents and balance of the family in the other. I
slept on the floor near the door in my sleeping-bag, with my nose
glued to the crack to get a breath of God's cold air, in spite of the
need for warmth--for not a blanket did the house possess. When I
asked, a little hurt, where were the blankets which we had sent last
year, the mother somewhat indignantly pointed to various trousers and
coats which betrayed their final resting-place, and remarked, "If
you'se had five lads all trying to get under one covering to onct,
Doctor, you'd soon know what would happen to that blanket."
Early in the morning I made a boiling of cocoa, and took the two elder
boys out for a seal hunt while waiting for my steamer. I was just in
time to see one boy carefully upset his mug of cocoa, when he thought
I was not looking, and replace it with cold spring water. "I 'lows
I'se not accustomed to no sweetness" was his simple explanation. It
was raw and damp as we rowed into the estuary at sunrise in search of
the seals. I was chilly even in a well-lined leather coat. But the
two shock-headed boys, clad in ancient cotton shirts, and with what
had once been only cotton overall jackets, were as jolly as crickets,
and apparently almost unduly warm. The Labrador has taught me one
truth, which as a physician I never forget, that is, coddling is the
terrible menace of civilization, and "to endure hardness" is the best
preparation for a "good soldier." On leaving, I promised to send to
those boys, whose contentment and cheerfulness greatly endeared them
to me, a dozen good fox traps in order to give them a chance for the
coming winter. Such a gift as those old iron rat traps seemed in their
eyes! When at last they arrived, and were really their own
possessions, no prince could have been prouder than they. The next
summer as I steamed North, we called in at D---- B----'s house. The
same famine in the land seemed to prevail; the same lack of apparently
everything which I should have wanted. But the old infective smile was
still presented with an almost religious ceremonial, and my friend
produced from his box a real silver fox skin. "I kept it for you'se,
Doctor," he said, "though us hadn't ne'er a bit in t' house. I know'd
you'd do better 'n we with he."
I promised to try, and on my way called in at some northern islands
where my friend, Captain Bartlett, father of the celebrated "Captain
Bob" of North Pole fame, carried on a summer trade and fishery. He
himself was a great seal and cod fisherman, and a man known for his
generous sympathy for others.
"Do your best for me, Captain Will," I asked as I handed over the
skin--and on coming South I found a complete winter diet laid out for
me to take to D---- B----'s little house. It was a veritable full load
for the small carrying capacity of my little craft.
When we arrived at the house on the promontory, however, it was locked
up and the family gone. They were off fishing on the outer islands, so
all we could do was to break in the door, pile up the things inside,
bar it up again, affixing a notice warning off bears, dogs, and all
poachers, and advising Dick that it was the price of his pelt. In the
note we also told him to put all the fur he caught the following
winter in a barrel and "sit on it" till we came along, if he wanted a
chance to get ahead. This he did almost literally. We ourselves took
his barrel to the nearest cash buyer, and ordered for him goods for
cash in St. John's to the full amount realized. The fur brought more
than his needs, and he was able to help out neighbours by reselling at
cash prices. This he did till the day of his death, when he left me,
as his executor, with a couple of hundred good dollars in cash to
divide among his children.
It was experiments like this which led me in later years to start the
small cooperative distributive stores, in spite of the knowledge of
the opposition and criticism it would involve. How can one preach the
gospel of love to a hungry people by sermons, or a gospel of healing
to underfed children by pills, while one feels that practical teaching
in home economics is what one would most wish if in their position?
The more broad-minded critics themselves privately acknowledged this
to me. One day a Northern furrier, an excellent and more intelligent
man than ordinary, came to me as a magistrate to insist that a trading
company keep its bargain by paying him in cash for a valuable fox
skin. They were trying to compel him to take flour and supplies from
them at prices far in excess of those at which he could purchase the
goods in St. John's, _via_ the mail steamer.
When asked to act as a justice of the peace for the Colony, I had
thought it my duty to accept the responsibility. Already it had led me
into a good deal of trouble. But that I should be forced to seize the
large store of a company, and threaten an auction of goods for
payment, without even a policeman to back me up, had never entered my
mind. It was, however, exactly what I now felt called upon to do. To
my intense surprise and satisfaction the trader immediately turned
round and said: "You are quite right. The money shall be paid at once.
The truck system is a mistaken policy, and loses us many customers."
It was Saturday night. We had decided to have a service for the
fishermen the next day, but had no place in which to gather.
Therefore, after we had settled the business I took my pluck in my
hands, and said:
"It's Sunday to-morrow. Would you lend us your big room for prayers in
the morning?"
"Why, certainly," he replied; and he was present himself and sang as
heartily as any man in the meeting. Nor did he lose a good customer on
account of his open-mindedness.