LECTURING AND CRUISING
We had now been coming for some two years to the coast, and the
problem was assuming larger proportions than I felt the Society at
home ought to be called on to finance. It seemed advisable, therefore,
to try and raise money in southern Newfoundland and Canada. So under
the wing of the most famous seal and fish killer, Captain Samuel
Blandford, I next visited and lectured in St. John's, Harbour Grace,
and Carbonear.
The towns in Newfoundland are not large. Its sectarian schools and the
strong denominational feeling between the churches so greatly divide
the people that united efforts for the Kingdom of God were extremely
rare before the war. Even now there is no Y.M.C.A. or Y.W.C.A. in the
Colony. The Boys' Brigade, which we initiated our first year, divided
as it grew in importance, into the Church Lads Brigade, the Catholic
Cadet Corps, and the Methodist Guards.
Dr. Bobardt, my young Australian colleague, and I now decided to cross
over to Halifax. We had only a certain amount of money for the
venture; it was our first visit to Canada, and we knew no one. We
carried credentials, however, from the Marquis of Ripon and other
reputable persons. If we had had experience as commercial travellers,
this would have been child's play. But our education had been in an
English school and university; and when finally we sat at breakfast at
the Halifax hotel we felt like fish out of water. Such success as we
obtained subsequently I attribute entirely to what then seemed to me
my colleague's colonial "cheek." He insisted that we should call on
the most prominent persons at once, the Prime Minister, the General in
charge of the garrison, the Presidents of the Board of Trade and
University, the Governor of the Province, and all the leading
clergymen. There have been times when I have hesitated about getting
my anchors for sea, when the barometer was falling, the wind in, and a
fog-bank on the horizon--but now, years after, I still recall my
reluctance to face that ordeal. But like most things, the obstacles
were largely in one's own mind, and the kindness which we received
left me entirely overwhelmed. Friends formed a regular committee to
keep a couple of cots going in our hospital, to collect supplies, and
sent us to Montreal with introductions and endorsements. Some of these
people have since been lifelong helpers of the Labrador Mission.
By the time we reached Montreal, our funds were getting low, but Dr.
Bobardt insisted that we must engage the best accommodations, even if
it prevented our travelling farther west. The result was that
reporters insisted on interviewing him as to the purpose of an
Australian coming to Montreal; and I was startled to see a long
account which he had jokingly given them published in the morning
papers, stating that his purpose was to materialize the All Red Line
and arrange closer relations between Australia and Canada. According
to his report my object was to inspect my ranch in Alberta. Life to
him, whether on the Labrador Coast, in an English school, or in his
Australian home, was one perpetual picnic.
Naturally, our most important interview was with Lord Strathcona. He
was President of the Hudson Bay Company, the Canadian Pacific
Railroad, and the Bank of Montreal. As a poor Scotch lad named Donald
Smith he had lived for thirteen years of his early life in Labrador.
There he had found a wife and there his daughter was born. From the
very first he was thoroughly interested in our work, and all through
the years until his death in 1914 his support was maintained, so that
at the very time he died we were actually due to visit him the
following month at Knelsworth.
We hired the best hall and advertised Sir Donald as our chairman. To
save expense Dr. Bobardt acted in the ticket-box. When Sir Donald came
along, not having seen him previously, he insisted on collecting fifty
cents from him as from the rest. When Sir Donald strongly protested
that he was our chairman, the shrewd young doctor merely replied that
several others before him had made the same remark. Every one in the
city knew Sir Donald; and when the matter was explained to him in the
greenroom, he was thoroughly pleased with the business-like attitude
of the Mission. As we had never seen Canada he insisted that we must
take a holiday and visit as far west as British Columbia. All of this
he not only arranged freely for us, but even saw to such details as
that we should ride on the engine through the Rocky Mountains, and be
entertained at his home called "Silver Heights" while in Winnipeg. It
was during this trip that I visited "Grenfell Town," a queer little
place called after Pascoe Grenfell, of the Bank of England. The marvel
of the place to me was the thousands and thousands of acres of
splendid farmland on which no one lived. I promised that I would send
the hotel-keeper the Grenfell crest.
Lord Strathcona later presented the Mission with a fine little
steamer, the Sir Donald, purchased and equipped at his expense through
the Committee in Montreal.
We went back to England very well satisfied with our work. Dr. Bobardt
left me and entered the Navy, while I returned the following year and
steamed the new boat from Montreal down the St. Lawrence River and the
Straits to Battle Harbour. There the Albert, which had sailed again
from England with doctors, nurses, and supplies, was to meet me. We
had made a fine voyage, visiting all along the coast as we journeyed,
and had turned in from sea through the last "run," or passage between
islands. We had polished our brass-work, cleaned up our decks, hoisted
our flags, all that we might make a triumphant entry on our arrival a
few minutes later--when suddenly, _Buff--Bur-r--Buff_, we rose,
staggered, and fell over on a horrible submerged shoal. Our side was
gored, our propeller and shaft gone, our keel badly splintered, and
the ship left high and dry. When we realized our mistake and the
dreadful position into which we had put ourselves, we rowed ashore to
the nearest island, walked three or four miles over hill and bog, and
from there got a fisherman with a boat to put us over to Battle
Harbour Island. The good ship Albert lay at anchor in the harbour. Our
new colleagues and old friends were all impatiently waiting to see our
fine new steamer speed in with all her flags up--when, instead, two
bedraggled-looking tramps, crestfallen almost to weeping, literally
crept aboard.
Sympathy took the form of deeds and a crowd at once went round in
boats with a museum of implements. Soon they had her off, and our
plucky schooner took her in tow all the three hundred miles to the
nearest dry-dock at St. John's.
Meanwhile Sir Thomas Roddick, of Montreal, an old Newfoundlander, had
presented us with a splendid twenty-foot jolly-boat, rigged with
lug-sail and centre-boom. In this I cruised north to Eskimo Bay,
harbouring at nights if possible, getting a local pilot when I could,
and once being taken bodily on board, craft and all, by a big friendly
fishing schooner. It proved a most profitable summer. I was so
dependent on the settlers and fishermen for food and hospitality that
I learned to know them as would otherwise have been impossible. Far
the best road to a seaman's heart is to let him do something for you.
Our impressions of a landscape, like our estimates of character, all
depend on our viewpoint. Fresh from the more momentous problems of
great cities, the interests and misunderstandings of small isolated
places bias the mind and make one censorious and resentful. But from
the position of a tight corner, that of needing help and hospitality
from entire strangers, one learns how large are the hearts and homes
of those who live next to Nature. If I knew the Labrador people before
(and among such I include the Hudson Bay traders and the Newfoundland
fishermen), that summer made me love them. I could not help feeling
how much more they gladly and freely did for me than I should have
dreamed of doing for them had they come along to my house in London. I
have sailed the seas in ocean greyhounds and in floating palaces and
in steam yachts, but better than any other I love to dwell on the
memories of that summer, cruising the Labrador in a twenty-footer.
That year I was late returning South. Progress is slow in the fall of
the year along the Labrador in a boat of that capacity. I was
weather-bound, with the snow already on the ground in Square Island
Harbour. The fishery of the settlers had been very poor. The traders
coming South had passed them by. There were eight months of winter
ahead, and practically no supplies for the dozen families of the
little village. I shall never forget the confidence of the patriarch
of the settlement, Uncle Jim, whose guest I was. The fact that we were
without butter, and that "sweetness" (molasses) was low, was scarcely
even noticed. I remember as if it were yesterday the stimulating tang
of the frosty air and the racy problem of the open sea yet to be
covered. The bag of birds which we had captured when we had driven in
for shelter from the storm made our dry-diet supper sweeter than any
Delmonico ten-course dinner, because we had wrested it ourselves from
the reluctant environment. Then last of all came the general meeting
in Uncle Jim's house at night to ask the Lord to open the windows of
heaven for the benefit of the pathetic little group on the island.
Next morning the first thing on which our eyes lighted was the belated
trader, actually driven north again by the storm, anchored right in
the harbour. Of course Uncle Jim knew that it would be there.
Personally, I did not expect her, so can claim no credit for the
telepathy; but if faith ever did work wonders it was on that occasion.
There were laughing faces and happy hearts as we said good-bye, when
my dainty little lady spread her wings to a fair breeze a day or so
later.
The gallant little Sir Donald did herself every credit the following
year, and we not only visited the coast as far north as Cape Chidley,
but explored the narrow channel which runs through the land into
Ungava Bay, and places Cape Chidley itself on a detached island.
There were a great many fishing schooners far north that season, and
the keen pleasures of exploring a truly marvellous coast, practically
uncharted and unknown, were redeemed from the reproach of selfishness
by the numerous opportunities for service to one's fellow men.
[Illustration: THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN SUMMER]
Once that summer we were eleven days stuck in the ice, and while there
the huge mail steamer broke her propeller, and a boat was sent up to
us through the ice to ask for our help. The truck on my mastheads was
just up to her deck. The ice was a lot of trouble, but we got her into
safety. On board were the superintendent of the Moravian Missions and
his wife. They were awfully grateful. The great tub rolled about so in
the Atlantic swell that the big ice-pans nearly came on deck. My
dainty little lady took no notice of anything and picked her way among
the pans like Agag "treading delicately." We had five hours' good
push, however, to get into Battle Harbour. It was calm in the
ice-field, only the heavy tide made it run and the little "alive"
steamer with human skill beat the massive mountains of ice into a
cocked hat.
At Indian Tickle there is a nice little church which was built by
subscription and free labour the second year we came on the coast.
There is one especially charming feature about this building. It
stands in such a position that you can see it as you come from the
north miles away from the harbour entrance, and it is so situated that
it leads directly into the safe anchorage. There are no lights to
guide sailors on this coast at all, and yet during September, October,
and November, three of the most dangerous months in the year, hundreds
of schooners and thousands of men, women, and children are coming into
or passing through this harbour on their way to the southward. By a
nice arrangement the little east window points to the north--if that
is not Irish--and two large bracket lamps can be turned on a pivot, so
that the lamps and their reflectors throw a light out to sea. The
good planter, at his own expense, often maintains a light here on
stormy or dark nights, and "steering straight for it" brings one to
safety.
While cruising near Cape Chidley, a schooner signalling with flag at
half-mast attracted our attention. On going aboard we found a young
man with the globe of one eye ruptured by a gun accident, in great
pain, and in danger of losing the other eye sympathetically. Having
excised the globe, we allowed him to go back to his vessel, intensely
grateful, but full of apprehension as to how his girl would regard him
on his return South. It so happened that we had had a gift of false
eyes, and we therefore told him to call in at hospital on his way home
and take his chance on getting a blue one. While walking over the hill
near the hospital that fall I ran into a crowd of young fishermen,
whose schooner was wind-bound in the harbour, and who had been into
the country for an hour's trouting. One asked me to look at his eye,
as something was wrong with it. Being in a hurry, I simply remarked,
"Come to hospital, and I'll examine it for you"; whereupon he burst
out into a merry laugh, "Why, Doctor, I'm the boy whose eye you
removed. This is the glass one you promised. Do you think it will suit
her?"
Another time I was called to a large schooner in the same region.
There were two young girls on board doing the cooking and cleaning, as
was the wont in Newfoundland vessels. One, alas, was seriously ill,
having given birth to a premature child, and having lain absolutely
helpless, with only a crew of kind but strange men anywhere near.
Rolling her up in blankets, we transferred her to the Sir Donald, and
steamed for the nearest Moravian station. Here the necessary
treatment was possible, and when we left for the South a Moravian's
good wife accompanied us as nurse. The girl, however, had no wish to
live. "I want to die, Doctor; I can never go home again." Her physical
troubles had abated, but her mind was made up to die, and this, in
spite of all our care, she did a few days later. The pathos of the
scene as we rowed the poor child's body ashore for interment on a
rocky and lonely headland, looking out over the great Atlantic,
wrapped simply in the flag of her country, will never be forgotten by
any of us--the silent but unanswerable reproach on man's utter
selfishness. Many such scenes must rise to the memory of the general
practitioner; at times, thank God, affording those opportunities of
doing more for the patients than simply patching up their
bodies--opportunities which are the real reward for the "art of
healing." Some years later I revisited the grave of this poor girl,
marked by the simple wooden cross which we had then put up, and
bearing the simple inscription:
Suzanne
"Jesus said, Neither do I condemn thee."
The fall trip lasted till late into November, without our even
realizing the fact that snow was on the ground. Indeed the ponds were
all frozen and we enjoyed drives with dog teams on the land before we
had finished our work and could think of leaving. We had scarcely left
Flowers Cove and were just burying our little steamer--loaded to the
utmost with wood, cut in return for winter clothing--in the dense fog
which almost universally maintains in the Straits, and were rounding
the hidden ledges of rock which lie half a mile offshore, when we
discovered a huge trans-Atlantic liner racing up in our wake. We
instantly put down our helm and scuttled out of the way to avoid the
wash, and almost held our breath as the great steamer dashed by at
twenty miles an hour, between us and the hidden shoal. She altered her
helm as she did so, no doubt catching her first sight of the
lighthouse as she emerged from the fog-bank, but as it was, she must
have passed within an ace of the shoal. We expected every minute to
see her dash on the top of it, and then she passed out of sight once
more, her light-hearted passengers no doubt completely unconscious
that they had been in any danger at all.
The last port of call was Henley, or Chateau, where formerly the
British had placed a fort to defend it against the French. We had
carried round with us a prospective bridegroom, and we were privileged
to witness the wedding, a simple but very picturesque proceeding. A
parson had been fetched from thirty miles away, and every kind of
hospitality provided for the festive event. But in spite of the warmth
of the occasion the weather turned bitterly cold, the harbour "caught
over," and for a week we were prisoners. When at last the young ice
broke up again, we made an attempt to cross the Straits, but sea and
wind caught us halfway and forced us to run back, this time in the
thick fog. The Straits' current had carried us a few miles in the
meanwhile--which way we did not know--and the land, hard to make out
as it was in the fog, was white with snow. However, with the storm
increasing and the long dark night ahead, we took a sporting chance,
and ran direct in on the cliffs. How we escaped shipwreck I do not
know now. We suddenly saw a rock on our bow and a sheer precipice
ahead, twisted round on our heel, shot between the two, and we knew
where we were, as that is the only rock on a coast-line of twenty
miles of beach--but there really is no room between it and the cliff.
All along the coast that year we noticed a change of attitude toward
professional medical aid. Confidence in the wise woman, in the seventh
son and his "wonderful" power, in the use of charms like green
worsted, haddock fins, or scrolls of prayer tied round the neck, had
begun to waver. The world talks still of a blind man made to see
nineteen hundred years ago; but the coast had recently been more
thrilled by the tale of a blind man made to see by "these yere
doctors." One was a man who for seventeen years had given up all hope;
and two others, old men, parted for years, and whose first occasion of
seeing again had revealed to them the fact that they were brothers.
Some lame had also been made to walk--persons who had abandoned hope
quite as much as he who lay for forty years by the Pool of Siloam, or
for a similar period at the Golden Gate.
One of my first operations had been rendered absolutely inescapable by
the great pain caused by a tumour in the leg. The patient had insisted
on having five men sit on her while the operation proceeded, as she
did not believe it was right to be put to sleep, and, moreover, she
secretly feared that she might not wake up again. But now the
conversion of the coast had proceeded so far that many were pleading
for a winter doctor. At first we did not think it feasible, but my
colleague, Dr. Willway, finally volunteered to stay at Battle Harbour.
We loaded him up with all our spare assets against the experiment, the
hospital being but very ill-equipped for an Arctic winter. When the
following summer we approached the coast, it was with real
trepidation that I scanned the land for signs of my derelict friend.
We felt that he would be gravely altered at least, possibly having
grown hair all over his face. When an alert, tanned, athletic figure,
neatly tonsured and barbered, at last leaped over our rail, all our
sympathy vanished and gave way to jealousy.
One detail, however, had gone wrong. We had anchored our beautiful Sir
Donald in his care in a harbour off the long bay on the shores of
which he was wintering. He had seen her once or twice in her ice
prison, but when he came to look for her in the spring, she had
mysteriously disappeared. The ice was there still. There wasn't a
vestige of wreckage. She must have sunk, and the hole frozen up. Yet
an extended period of "creeping" the bottom with drags and grapples
had revealed nothing, and, anyhow, the water not being deep, her masts
should have been easily visible. It was not till some time later that
we heard from the South that our trusty craft had been picked up some
three hundred miles to the southward and westward, well out in a heavy
ice-pack, and right in amongst a big patch of seals, away off on the
Atlantic. The whole of the bay ice had evidently gone out together,
taking the ship with it, and the bay had then neatly frozen over
again. The seal hunters laughingly assured me that they found a patch
of old "swiles" having tea in the cabin. As the hull of the Sir Donald
was old, and the size of the boat made good medical work aboard
impossible, we decided to sell her and try and raise the funds for a
more seaworthy and capable craft.
Years of experience have subsequently emphasized the fact that if you
are reasonably resistant, and want to get tough and young again, you
can do far worse than come and winter on "the lonely Labrador."