THE MILL AND THE FOX FARM
The argument for cooperation had been that life on the coast was not
worth living under the credit system. A short feast and a long famine
was the local epigram. If our profits could be maintained on the
coast, and spent on the coast, then the next-to-nature life had enough
to offer in character as well as in maintenance to attract a permanent
population, especially with the furring in winter. For the actual
figures showed that good hunters made from a thousand to fifteen
hundred dollars in a season, besides the salmon and cod fishery. There
was, moreover, game for food, free firewood, water, homes, and no
taxation except indirect in duties on their goods.
These same conditions prevailed on the long, narrow slice of land
known as the "French shore" in northern Newfoundland. There the people
were more densely settled, the hinterland was small, and many
therefore could not go furring. Moreover, the polar current, entering
the mouth of the Straits of Belle Isle, makes this section of land
more liable to summer frosts, with a far worse climate than the
Labrador bays, and gardening is less remunerative. We puzzled our
brains for some way to add to our earning capacities, some cooperative
productive as well as distributive enterprise.
The poverty which I had witnessed in Canada Bay in North Newfoundland,
some sixty miles south of St. Anthony Hospital, had left me very keen
to do something for that district which might really offer a solution
of the problem. I had been told that there was plenty of timber to
justify running a mill in the bay; but that no sawmills paid in
Newfoundland. This was emphasized in St. John's by my friends who
still own the only venture out of the eleven which have operated in
that city that has been able to continue. They have succeeded by
adopting modern methods and erecting a factory for making furniture,
so as to supply finished articles direct to their customers. We knew
that in our case labour would be cheaper than ordinarily, for our
labour in winter had generally to go begging. It was mainly this fact
which finally induced us to make the attempt.
[Illustration: ST. ANTHONY]
Having talked the matter over with the people we secured from the
Government a special grant, as the venture, if it succeeded, would
relieve them of the necessity of having poor-relief bills. The whole
expense of the enterprise fell upon myself, for the Mission Board
considered it outside their sphere; and already we had built St.
Anthony Hospital in spite of the fact that they thought that we were
undertaking more than they would be able to handle, and had
discouraged it from the first.
The people had no money to start a mill, and the circumstances
prohibited my asking aid from outside, so it was with considerable
anxiety that we ordered a mill, as if it were a pound of chocolates,
and arranged with two young friends to come out from England as
volunteers, except for their expenses, to help us through with the new
effort. At the same time there was three hundred dollars to pay for
the necessary survey and line cutting, and supplies of food for the
loggers for the winter. Houses must also be erected and furnished.
Ignorance undoubtedly supplied us with the courage to begin.
Personally I knew nothing whatever of mills, having never even seen
one. Nor had I seen the grant of land, or selected a site for the
building. This was left entirely to the people themselves; and as none
of them had ever seen a mill either, we all felt a bit uneasy about
our capacities. I had left orders with the captain of the Cooperator
(our schooner) to fetch the mill and put it where the people told him;
but when I heard that there was one piece which included the boiler
which weighed three tons, it seemed to me that they could never handle
it. We had no wharf ready to receive it and no boat capable of
carrying it. I woke many times that summer wondering if it had not
gone to the bottom while they were attempting the landing. There was
no communication whatever with them as we were six hundred miles
farther north on our summer cruise; and we had not the slightest
control over the circumstances in which we might become involved.
It was late in the season and the snow was already deep on the ground
when eventually we were piloted to the spot selected. It was nine
miles up the bay on a well-wooded promontory of a side inlet. The
water was deep to the shore and the harbour as safe as a house. The
boys from England had arrived, and a small cottage had been erected,
tucked away in the trees. It was very small, and very damp, the inside
of the walls being white with frost in the morning until the fire had
been under way for some time. But it was a merry crowd, emerging from
various little hutlets around among the trees, which greeted the
Strathcona.
The big boiler, the "bugaboo" of my dreams all summer, lay on the
bank. "How did you get it there?" was my first query. "We warped the
vessel close to the land, and then hove her close ashore and put skids
from the rocks off to her. On these we slid the boiler, all hands
hauling it up with our tackles."
Having left the few supplies which we had with us, for the Strathcona
has no hold or carrying space, we returned to the hospital, mighty
grateful for the successful opening of the venture. The survey had
been completed and accepted by the Government, and though
unfortunately it was but very poorly marked, and we have had lots of
trouble since,--as we have never been able to say exactly where our
boundaries lie, nor even to find marks enough to follow over the
original survey again,--yet it enabled us to get to work, which was
all that we wanted at the moment.
The fresh problems at the hospital, and the constant demands on our
energies, made Christmas and New Year go by with our minds quite
alienated from the cares of the new enterprise. But when after
Christmas the dogs had safely carried us over many miles of
snow-covered wastes, and our immediate patients gave us a chance to
look farther afield, I began to wonder if we might not pay the mill a
visit. By land it was only fifty miles distant to the southward,
possibly sixty if we had to go round the bays. The only difficulty
about the trip was that there were no trails, and most of the way led
through virgin forest, where windfalls and stumps and dense
undergrowth mixed with snow made the ordinary obstacle race a sprint
in the open in comparison. We knew what it meant, because in our
eagerness to begin our dog-driving when the first snow came, we had
wandered over small trees crusted with snow, fallen through, and
literally floundered about under the crust, unable to climb to the top
again. It was the nearest thing to the sensations of a man who cannot
swim struggling under the surface of the water. Moreover, on a tramp
with the minister, he had gone through his snow racquets and actually
lost the bows later, smashing them all up as he repeatedly fell
through between logs and tree-trunks and "tuckamore." His summons for
help and the idea that there were still eight miles to go still
haunted me. On that occasion we had cut down some spruce boughs and
improvised some huge webbed feet for ourselves, which had saved the
situation; but whether they would have served for twenty or thirty
miles, we could not tell. Not so long before a man named Casey,
bringing his komatik down the steep hill at Conche, missed his footing
and fell headlong by a bush into the snow. The heavy, loaded sledge
ran over him and pressed him still farther into the bank. Struggling
only made him sink the deeper, and an hour later the poor fellow was
discovered smothered to death.
No one knew the way. We could not hear of a single man who had ever
gone across in winter, though some said that an old fellow who had
lived farther south had once carried the mails that way. At length we
could stand it no longer, and arranging with four men and two extra
teams, we started off. We hoped to reach the mill in two days, but at
the end of that time we were still trying to push through the tangle
of these close-grown forests. To steer by compass sounded easy, but
the wretched instrument seemed persistently to point to precipitous
cliffs or impenetrable thickets. There were no barren hilltops after
the first twenty miles. Occasionally we would stop, climb a tree, and
try to get a view. But climbing a conifer whose boughs are heavily
laden with ice and snow is no joke, and gave very meagre returns. At
last, however, we struck a high divide, and from an island in the
centre of a lake, occupied only by two lone fir trees, we got a view
both ways, showing the Cloudy Hills which towered over the south side
of the bay in which the mill stood.
A very high, densely wooded hill lay, however, directly in our path;
and which way to get round it best none of us knew. We "tossed up"
and went to the eastward--the wrong side, of course. We soon struck a
river, and at once surmised that if we followed it, it must bring us
to the head of the bay, which meant only three miles of salt water ice
to cover. Alas, the stream proved very torrential. It leaped here and
there over so many rapid falls that great canyons were left in the
ice, and instead of being able to dash along as when first we struck
it, we had painfully to pick our way between heavy ice-blocks, which
sorely tangled up our traces, and our dogs ran great danger of being
injured. Nor could we leave the river, for the banks were precipitous
and utterly impassable with undergrowth. At length when we came to a
gorge where the boiling torrent was not even frozen, and as prospects
of being washed under the ice became only too vivid, we were forced to
cut our way out on the sloping sides. The task was great fun, but an
exceedingly slow process.
It was altogether an exciting and delightful trip. Now we have a good
trail cut and blazed, which after some years of experience we have
gradually straightened out, with two tilts by the roadside when the
weather makes camping imperative, or when delay is caused by having
helpless patients to haul, till now it is only a "joy-ride" to go
through that beautiful country "on dogs." There is always a challenge,
however, left in that trail--just enough to lend tang to the toil of
it. Once, having missed the way in a blizzard, we had to camp on the
snow with the thermometer standing at twenty below zero. The problem
was all the more interesting as we struck only "taunt" timberwoods
with no undergrowth to halt the wind. On another occasion we attempted
to cross Hare Bay, and one of the dogs fell through the ice. There was
a biting wind blowing, and it was ten degrees below zero. When we
were a mile off the land I got off the sledge to try the ice edge,
when suddenly it gave way, and in I fell. It did not take me long to
get out--the best advice being to "keep cool." I had as hard a mile's
running as ever I experienced, for my clothing was fast becoming like
the armour of an ancient knight; and though in my youth I had been
accustomed to break the ice in the morning to bathe, I had never run
in a coat of mail.
Never shall I forget dragging ourselves in among those big trees with
our axes, and tumbling to sleep in a grave in the snow, in spite of
the elements. In this hole in a sleeping-bag, protected by the light
drift which blew in, one rested as comfortably as in a more
conventional type of feather bed. Nor, when I think of De Quincey's
idea of supreme happiness before the glowing logs, can I forget that
gorgeous blaze which the watch kept up by felling trees full length
into the fire, so that our Yule logs were twenty feet long, and the
ruddy glow and crackling warmth went smashing through the hurtling
snowdrift. True, it was cold taking off our dripping clothing, which
as it froze on us made progress as difficult as if we were encased in
armour. But dancing up and down before a huge fire in the crisp open
air under God's blue sky gave as pleasing a reaction as doing the same
thing in the dusty, germ-laden atmosphere of a ballroom in the small
hours of the night, when one would better be in bed, if the joys of
efficiency and accomplishment are the durable pleasure of life.
It was a real picnic which we had at the mill. Our visit was as
welcome as it was unexpected, and we celebrated it by the whole day
off, when all hands went "rabbiting." When at the end, hot and tired,
we gathered round a huge log fire in the woods and discussed boiling
cocoa and pork buns, we all agreed that it had been a day worth
living for.
Logging had progressed favourably. Logs were close at hand; and the
whole enterprise spelled cash coming in that the people had never
earned before. The time had also arrived to prepare the machinery for
cutting the timber; boxes were being unpacked, and weird iron "parts"
revealed to us, that had all the interest of a Chinese puzzle, with
the added pleasure of knowing that they stood for much if we solved
the problems rightly.
When next we saw the mill it was spring, and the puffing smoke and
white heaps of lumber that graced the point and met our vision as we
rounded Breakheart Point will not soon be forgotten. Only one trouble
had proved insurmountable. The log-hauler would not deliver the goods
to the rotary saw. Later, with the knowledge that the whole apparatus
was upside down, it did not seem so surprising after all. One accident
also marred the year's record. While a party of children had been
crossing the ice in the harbour to school, a treacherous rapid had
caused it to give way and leave a number of them in the water. One of
my English volunteers, being a first-class athlete, had by swimming
saved five lives, but two had been lost, and the young fellow himself
so badly chilled that it had taken the hot body of one of the fathers
of the rescued children, wrapped up in bed with him in lieu of a
hot-water bottle, to restore his circulation.
The second fall was our hardest period. The bills for our lumber sold
had not been paid in time for us to purchase the absolutely essential
stock of food for the winter; and if we could not get a store of food,
we knew that our men could not go logging. It was food, not cash,
which they needed in the months when their own slender stock of
provisions gave out, and when all communication was cut off by the
frozen sea.
For a venture which seemed to us problematical in its outcome, we did
not dare to borrow money or to induce friends to invest; and of course
Mission funds were not available. For the day has not yet arrived when
all those who seek by their gifts to hasten the coming of the Kingdom
of God on earth recognize that to give the opportunity to men to
provide decently for their families and homes is as effective work for
the Master, whose first attribute was love, as patching up the
unfortunate victims of semi-starvation. The inculcation of the
particular intellectual conception which the donor may hold of
religion, or as to how, after death, the soul can get into heaven, is,
as the result of the Church teaching, still considered far the most
important line of effort. The emphasis on hospitals is second, partly
at least because, so it has seemed to me as a doctor of medicine, the
more obvious personal benefit thereby conferred renders the recipients
more impressionable to the views considered desirable to promulgate.
Yet only to-day, as I came home from our busy operating-room, I felt
how little real gain the additional time on earth often is either to
the world outside or even to the poor sufferers themselves. In order
to have one's early teachings on these matters profoundly shaken, one
has only to work as a surgeon in a country where tuberculosis,
beri-beri, and other preventable diseases, and especially the chronic
malnutrition of poverty fills your clinic with suffering children, who
at least are victims and not responsible spiritually for their
"punishment." Of course, the magnitude of service to the world of
every act of unselfishness, and much more of whole lives of devotion,
such as that of Miss Sullivan, the teacher of Miss Helen Keller, can
never be rightly estimated by any purely material conception of human
life.
Love is dangerously near to sentimentality when we actually prefer
remedial to prophylactic charity--and I personally feel that it is
false economy even from the point of view of mission funds. The
industrial mission, the educational mission, and the orphanage work at
least rank with and should go hand in hand with hospitals in any true
interpretation of a gospel of love.
In subsequent years the nearest attempt to finance such commonly
called "side issues of the work" has been with us through the medium
of a discretionary fund. Into this are put sums of money specially
given by personal friends, who are content to leave the allocation of
their expenditure in the hands of the worker on the actual field. This
fund is, of course, paid out in the same way as other mission funds,
and is as strictly supervised by the auditors. While it leaves
possibly more responsibility than some of us are worthy of, it enables
individuality to play that part in mission business which every one
recognizes to be all-important in the ordinary business of the world.
No money, however, from this fund has ever gone into the mill or in
assisting the cooperative stores.
Sorry as one feels to confess it, I have seen money wasted and lost
through red tape in the mission business. And after all is not mission
business part of the world's business, and must not the measure of
success depend largely on the same factors in the one case as in the
other? Has one man more than another the right to be called
"missionary," for of what use is any man in the world if he has no
mission in it? Christ's life is one long emphasis on the point that in
the last analysis, when something has to be done, it is the individual
who has to do it. It is, we believe, a fact of paramount importance
for efficiency and economy; and the loyalty of God in committing such
trust to us, when He presumably knows exactly how unworthy we are of
it, is the explanation of life's enigma.
When at last our food and freight were purchased for the loggers for
the winter and landed by the mail steamer nine miles from the mill,
the whole bay was frozen and five miles of ice already over six inches
thick. The hull of the Strathcona was three eighths of an inch soft
steel; but there was no other way to transport the goods but on her,
excepting by sledges--a very painful and impracticable method.
It was decided that as we could not possibly butt through the ice, we
must butt over it. The whole company of some thirty men helped us to
move everything, including chains and anchors, to the after end of the
ship, and to pile up the barrels of pork, flour, sugar, molasses,
etc., together with boats and all heavy weights, so that her fore foot
came above the water level and she looked as if she were sinking by
the stern. We then proceeded to crash into the ice. Up onto it we ran,
and then broke through, doing no damage whatever to her hull. The only
trouble was that sometimes she would get caught fast in the trough,
and it was exceedingly hard to back her astern for a second drive. To
counteract this all hands stood on one rail, each carrying a weight,
and then rushed over to the other side, backward and forward at the
word of command, thus causing the steamer to roll. It was a very slow
process, but we got there, though in true Biblical fashion, literally
"reeling to and fro like drunken men."
While the mill was in its cradle, we in the Strathcona were cruising
the northern Labrador waters. We witnessed that year, off the mighty
Kaumajets, the most remarkable storm of lightning that I have ever
seen in those parts. Inky masses hid the hoary heads of those
tremendous cliffs. Away to the northwest, over the high land called
Saeglek, a lurid light just marked the sharp outline of the mills.
Ahead, where we were trying to make the entrance to Hebron Bay, an
apparently impenetrable wall persisted. Seaward night had already
obscured the horizon; but the moon, hidden behind the curtain of the
storm, now and again fitfully illuminated some icebergs lazily heaving
on the ocean swell. Almost every second a vivid flash, now on one
side, now on the other, would show us a glimpse of the land looming
darkly ahead. The powers of darkness seemed at play; while the sea,
the ice, the craggy cliffs, and the flashing heavens were advertising
man's puny power.
An amusing incident took place in one isolated harbour. A patient came
on board for medicine, and after examining him I went below to make it
up. When I came on deck again I gave the medicine to one I took to be
my man, and then sent him ashore to get the twenty-five cent fee for
the Mission which he had forgotten. No sooner had he gone than another
man came and asked if his medicine was ready. I had to explain to him
that the man just climbing over the rail had it. The odd thing was
that the latter, having paid for it, positively refused to give it up.
True, he had not said that he was ill, but the medicine looked good
(Heaven save the mark!) and he "guessed that it would suit his
complaint all right."
At the mill we found that quite a large part of the timberland was
over limestone, while near our first dam there was some very white
marble. We fully intended to erect a kiln, using our refuse for fuel,
for the land is loaded with humic acid, and only plants like
blueberries, conifers, and a very limited flora flourish on it. Some
friends in England, however, hearing of marble in the bay, which it
was later discovered formed an entire mountain, commenced a marble
mine near the entrance. The material there is said to be excellent for
statuary. Even this small discovery of natural resources encouraged
us. For having neither road, telegraph, nor mail service to the mill,
we hoped that the development of these things might help in our own
enterprise.
For ten years the little mill has run, giving work to the locality,
better houses, a new church and school, and indeed created a new
village.
The only trouble with this North country's own peculiar winter work,
fur-hunting, is that its very nature limits its supply. In my early
days in the country, fur in Labrador was very cheap. Seldom did even a
silver fox fetch a hundred dollars. Beaver, lynx, wolverine, wolves,
bears, and other skins were priced proportionately. Still, some men
lived very well out of furring. We came to the conclusion that the
only way to improve conditions in this line was to breed some of the
animals in captivity. We did not then know of any enterprise of that
kind, but I remembered in the zoological gardens at Washington seeing
a healthy batch of young fox pups born in captivity.
Life is short. Things have to be crowded into it. So we started that
year an experimental fox farm at St. Anthony. A few uprights from the
woods and some rolls of wire are a fox farm. We put it close by the
hospital, thinking that it would be less trouble. The idea, we rejoice
to know, was perfectly right; but we had neither time, study, nor
experience to teach us how to manage the animals. Very soon we had a
dozen couples, red, white, patch, and one silver pair. Some of the
young fox pups were very tame, for I find an old record written by a
professor of Harvard University, while he was on board the Strathcona
on one trip when we were bringing some of the little creatures to St.
Anthony. He describes the state of affairs as follows: "Dr. Grenfell
at one time had fifteen little foxes aboard which he was carrying to
St. Anthony to start a fox farm there. Some of these little animals
had been brought aboard in blubber casks, and their coats were very
sticky. After a few days they were very tame and played with the dogs;
were all over the deck, fell down the companionway, were always having
their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, when not
yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman who took care of them
said, 'I been cleaned out that fox box. It do be shockin'. I been in a
courageous turmoil my time, but dis be the head smell ever I
witnessed.'"
When the farm was erected, every schooner entering the harbour was
interested in it, and a deep-cut pathway soon developed as the crews
went up to see the animals. The reds and one patch were very tame, and
always came out to greet us. One of the reds loved nothing better than
to be caught and hugged, and squealed with delight like a child when
you took notice of it. The whites, and still more the silvers, were
always very shy; and though we never reared a single pup, there were
some born and destroyed by the old ones.
As the years passed we decided to close up the little farm,
particularly after a certain kind of sickness which resembled
strychnine poisoning had attacked and destroyed three of the animals
which were especial pets. We then converted the farm into a garden
with a glass house for our seedling vegetables.
Meanwhile the industry had been developed by a Mr. Beetz in Quebec
Labrador with very marked economic success; and in Prince Edward
Island with such tremendous profit that it soon became the most
important industry in the Province. Enormous prices were paid for
stock. I remembered a schooner in the days of our farm (1907) bringing
me in four live young silvers, and asking two hundred dollars for the
lot. We had enough animals and refused to buy them. In 1914 one of our
distant neighbours, who had caught a live slut in pup, sold her with
her little brood for ten thousand dollars. We at once started an
agitation to encourage the industry locally, and the Government passed
regulations that only foxes bred in the Colony could be exported
alive. The last wild one sold was for twenty-five dollars to a buyer,
and resold for something like a thousand dollars by him. A large
number of farms grew up and met with more or less success, one big one
especially in Labrador, which is still running. We saw there this
present year some delightful little broods, also some mink and marten
(sables), the prettiest little animals to watch possible. For some
reason the success of this farm so far has not been what was hoped for
it. Indeed, even in Prince Edward Island the furor has somewhat died
down owing to the war; though at the close of the war it is
anticipated that the industry will go on steadily and profitably. Are
not sheep, angora goats, oxen, and other animals just the result of
similar efforts? If fox-farming some day should actually supersede the
use of the present sharp-toothed leg trap, no small gain would have
been effected. A fox now trapped in those horrible teeth remains
imprisoned generally till he perishes of cold, exhaustion, or fear.
Though the fur trapper as a rule is a most gentle creature, the
"quality of mercy is not strained" in furring.