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DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 

 
DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
A DOCTOR . . . THE PROPHET AND CHAMPION OF A PEOP 
 
Dr. GrenfelPs Parish 
 
 The Deep Sea F i s her m e 
 
 n 
 
 By 
 NORMAN DUNCAN 
 
 Author of 
 " Doctor Luke of the Labrador " 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
^J^ 
 
 Copyright, 1905, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 
 copy li 
 
 .MOl 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 63 Washington Street 
 Toronto: 27 Richmond Street, W 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
TO 
 TEE CBEW OF THE " 8TEATHG0NA 
 
 Henry Bartlett, 
 Munden Clark, 
 "William Percy, 
 John Scott, 
 Archie Butler, 
 James Hiscock, 
 Alec Sims, 
 
 Skipper 
 
 Second Samd 
 
 First Engineer 
 
 Second Engineer 
 
 Hosjpital Hand 
 
 Cook 
 
 SJivp's Boy 
 
TO THE READER 
 
 THIS book pretends to no literary 
 excellence ; it has a far better rea- 
 son for existence — a larger justifica- 
 tion. Its purpose is to spread the knowl- 
 edge of the work of Dr. Wilfred T. Gren- 
 f ell, of the Royal I^ational Mission to Deep- 
 Sea Fishermen, at work on the coasts of E'ew- 
 foundland and Labrador; and to describe 
 the character and condition of the folk whom 
 he seeks to help. The man and the mission 
 are worthy of sympathetic interest ; worthy, 
 too, of unqualified approbation, of support 
 of every sort. Dr. Grenfell is indefatigable, 
 devoted, heroic ; he is more and even better 
 than that — he is a sane and efficient worker. 
 Frankly, the author believes that the reader 
 would do a good deed by contributing to 
 the maintenance and development of the 
 doctor's beneficent undertakings; and re- 
 
TO THE EEADER 
 
 grets that the man and his work are pre- 
 sented in this inadequate way and by so 
 incapable a hand. The author is under ob- 
 ligation to the editors of Harjper^s Magazine^ 
 of The World'' s Work, and of Outing for 
 permission to reprint the contributed papers 
 which, in some part, go to make up the vol- 
 ume. He wishes also to protest that Dr. 
 Grenf ell is not the hero of a certain work of 
 fiction dealing with life on the Labrador 
 coast. Some unhappy misunderstanding 
 has arisen on this point. The author wishes 
 to make it plain that " Doctor Duke " was 
 not drawn from Dr. Grenfell. 
 
 KD. 
 
 College Campusy 
 
 Washington, Pennsylvania, January 23, igo^. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. 
 
 The Doctor . . . . 
 
 II 
 
 II. 
 
 A Round of Bleak Coasts 
 
 i8 
 
 III. 
 
 Ships in Peril . 
 
 26 
 
 IV. 
 
 Desperate Need 
 
 37 
 
 V. 
 
 A Helping Hand 
 
 48 
 
 VI. 
 
 Faith and Duty 
 
 • 55 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Liveyere . 
 
 . 67 
 
 VIII. 
 
 With the Fleet 
 
 . 83 
 
 IX. 
 
 On the French Shore 
 
 . 103 
 
 X. 
 
 Some Outport Folk 
 
 . no 
 
 XI. 
 
 Winter Prachce. . 
 
 • 132 
 
 XII. 
 
 The Champion 
 
 . 146 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Facing page 
 " A Doctor ... the Prophet and Champion 
 
 of a People" Titk 
 
 " It is an Evil Coast " 20 
 
 " Bound North " . . . . . 30 
 
 "A Turf Hut" 44 
 
 *'Set Sail from Great Yarmouth Harbour for 
 
 Labrador " 50 
 
 "Appeared with a Little Steam-launch, the 
 
 Princess May" 55 
 
 " The Hospital Ship, Strathcona " . . -65 
 " The Labrador ' Liveyere ' " . . .73 
 
 " At Indian Harbour " .... 86 
 
 " Set the Traps in the Open Sea " . .93 
 
 " The Bully-boat Becomes a Home " . . loi 
 " The Whitewashed Cottages on the Hills " . 1 1 1 
 
 "Toil" 122 
 
 "The Hospital at Battle Harbour " . .133 
 "The Doctor on a Winter's Journey " . • H4 
 
 " A Crew Quite Capable of Taking You into It " 1 50 
 
Dr. Grenfeir s Parish 
 
 THE DOCTOR 
 
 DOCTOK WILFKED T. GKEN- 
 FELL is the young Englishman 
 who, for the love of God, practices 
 medicine on the coasts of Newfoundland and 
 Labrador. Other men have been moved 
 to heroic deeds by the same high motive, 
 but the professional round, I fancy, is quite 
 out of the common ; indeed, it may be that 
 in all the world there is not another of the 
 sort. It extends from Cape John of New- 
 foundland around Cape Norman and into 
 the Strait of Belle Isle, and from Ungava 
 Bay and Cape Chidley of the Labrador south- 
 ward far into the Gulf of St. Lawrence — 
 two thousand miles of bitterly inhospitable 
 shore : which a man in haste must sail with 
 his life in his hands. The folk are for the 
 11 
 
12 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 most part isolated and desperately wretched 
 — the shore fishermen of the remoter New- 
 foundland coasts, the Labrador " liveyeres," 
 the Indians of the forbidding interior, the Es- 
 quimaux of the far north. It is to such as 
 these that the man gives devoted and heroic 
 service — not for gain; there is no gain to 
 be got in those impoverished places : merely 
 for the love of God. 
 
 I once went ashore in a little harbour of 
 the northeast coast of l!Tewfoundland. It 
 was a place most unimportant — and it was 
 just beyond the doctor's round. The sea 
 sullenly confronted it, hills overhung it, and 
 a scrawny wilderness flanked the hills ; the 
 ten white cottages of the place gripped the 
 dripping rocks as for dear life. And down 
 the path there came an old fisherman to 
 meet the stranger. 
 
 " Good-even, zur," said he. 
 
 " Good-evening." 
 
 He waited for a long time. Then, "Be 
 you a doctor, zur ? " he asked. 
 
THE DOCTOR 13 
 
 " No, sir." 
 
 " Noa ? Isn't you ? Now, I was thinkin' 
 maybe you might be. But you isn't, you 
 says?" 
 
 " Sorry — but, no ; really, I'm not." 
 
 " Well, zur," he persisted, " I was thinkin' 
 you might be, when I seed you comin' 
 ashore. They is a doctor on this coast," 
 he added, " but he's sixty mile along shore. 
 'Tis a wonderful expense t' have un up. 
 This here harbour isn't able. An' you isn't 
 a doctor, you says ? Is you sure, zur ? " 
 
 There was unhappily no doubt about it. 
 
 " I was thinkin' you might be," he went 
 on, wistfully, " when I seed you comin' 
 ashore. But perhaps you might know 
 something about doctorin' ? Noa ? " 
 
 "Nothing." 
 
 "I was thinkin', now, that you might. 
 'Tis my little girl that's sick. Sure, none 
 of us knows what's the matter with she. 
 Woan't you come up an' see she, zur ? Per- 
 haps you might do something — though you 
 isn't — a doctor." 
 
14 BR. GEEISTFELL^S PARISH 
 
 The little girl was lying on the floor — on 
 a ragged quilt, in a corner. She was a fair 
 child — a little maid of seven. Her eyes 
 were deep blue, wide, and fringed with 
 long, heavy lashes. Her hair was flaxen, 
 abundant, all tangled and curly. Indeed, 
 she was a winsome little thing ! 
 
 " I'm thinkin' she'U be dyin' soon," said 
 the mother. " Sure, she's wonderful swelled 
 in the legs. "We been waitin' for a doctor 
 t' come, an' we kind o' thought you was 
 one." 
 
 " How long have you waited ? " 
 
 "'Twas in April she was took. She've 
 been lyin' there ever since. 'Tis near Au- 
 gust, now, I'm thinkin'." 
 
 " They was a doctor here two year ago," 
 said the man. " He come by chance," he 
 added, " like you." 
 
 " Think they'll be on^ comin' soon ? " the 
 woman asked. 
 
 I took the little girl's hand. It was dry 
 and hot. She did not smile — nor was she 
 afraid. Her fingers closed upon the hand 
 
THE DOCTOR 15 
 
 she held. She was a blue-eyed, winsome 
 little maid; but pain had driven all the 
 sweet roguery out of her face. 
 
 " Does you think she'll die, zur ? " asked 
 the woman, anxiously. 
 
 I did not know. 
 
 " Sure, zur," said the man, trying to smile, 
 "'tis wonderful queer, but I sure thought 
 you was a doctor, when I seed you comin' 
 ashore." 
 
 "But you isn't?" the woman pursued, 
 still hopefully. " Is you sure you couldn't do 
 nothin' ? Is you noa kind of a doctor, at all ? 
 We doan't — we doan't — want she t' die I " 
 
 In the silence — so long and deep a silence 
 — melancholy shadows crept in from the 
 desolation without. 
 
 " I wisht you was a doctor," said the man. 
 " I — wisht — you — was ! " 
 
 He was crying. 
 
 " They need," thought I, " a mission-doc- 
 tor in these parts." 
 
 And the next day — in the harbour beyond 
 — I first heard of Grenfell. In that place 
 
16 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 they said they would send Kim to the little 
 maid who lay dying ; they assured me, in- 
 deed, that he would make haste, when he came 
 that way: which would be, perhaps, they 
 thought, in " 'long about a month." Whether 
 or not the doctor succoured the child I do not 
 know ; but I have never forgotten this first 
 impression of his work — the conviction that 
 it was a good work for a man to be about. 
 
 Subsequently I learned that Dr. Grenfell 
 was the superintendent of the I^ewf oundland 
 and Labrador activities of the Koyal !N"a- 
 tional Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen, an 
 English organization, with a religious and 
 medical work already well-established on 
 the North Sea, and a medical mission then 
 in process of development on the North At- 
 lantic coast. Two years later he discovered 
 himself to be a robust, hearty Saxon, strong, 
 indefatigable, devoted, jolly; a doctor, a 
 parson by times, something of a sportsman 
 when occasion permitted, a master-mariner, 
 a magistrate, the director of certain commer- 
 
THE DOCTOR 17 
 
 cial enterprises designed to " help the folk 
 help themselves" — the prophet and cham- 
 pion, indeed, of a people : and a man very 
 much in love with life. 
 
II 
 
 A ROUND of BLEAK COASTS 
 
 THE coast of Labrador, which, in 
 number of miles, forms the larger 
 half of the doctor's round, is for- 
 bidding, indeed — naked, rugged, desolate, 
 lying sombre in a mist. It is of weather- 
 worn gray rock, broken at intervals by long 
 ribs of black. In part it is low and ragged, 
 slowly rising, by way of bare slopes and 
 starved forest, to broken mountain ranges, 
 which lie blue and bold in the inland waste. 
 Elsewhere it rears from the edge of the sea 
 in stupendous cliffs and lofty, rugged hills. 
 There is no inviting stretch of shore the 
 length of it — no sandy beach, no line of 
 shingle, no grassy bank ; the sea washes a 
 thousand miles of jagged rock. Were it not 
 for the harbours — innumerable and snugly 
 sheltered from the winds and ground swell 
 18 
 
A ROUND OF BLEAK COASTS 19 
 
 of the open — there would be no navigating 
 the waters of that region. The Strait Shore 
 is buoyed, lighted, minutely charted. The 
 reefs and currents and tickles ^ and harbours 
 are all known. A northeast gale, to be sure, 
 raises a commotion, and fog and drift-ice 
 add something to the chance of disaster; 
 but, as they say, from one peril there are 
 two ways of escape to three sheltered places. 
 To the north, however, where the doctor 
 makes his way, the coast is best sailed on 
 the plan of the skipper of the old Twelve 
 Brothers. 
 
 "You don't cotch me meddlin' with no 
 land ! " said he. 
 
 Past the Dead Islands, Snug Harbour, 
 Domino Run, Devil's Lookout and the 
 Quaker's Hat — beyond Johnny Paul's Rock 
 and the Wolves, Sandwich Bay, Tumble- 
 down Dick, Indian Harbour, and the White 
 Cockade — past Cape Harrigan, the Farm- 
 yard Islands and the Hen and Chickens — 
 
 * A *' tickle " is a naxrow passage to a harbour or be- 
 tween two islands. 
 
20 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 far north to the great, craggy hills and 
 strange peoples of Kikkertadsoak, Scoralik, 
 Tunnulusoak, E'ain, Okak, and, at last, 
 to Cape Chidley itself — northward, every 
 crooked mile of the way, bold headlands, 
 low outlying islands, sunken reefs, tides, 
 fogs, great winds and snow make hard sail- 
 ing of it. It is an evil coast, ill-charted 
 where charted at all; some part of the 
 present-day map is based upon the guess- 
 work of the eighteenth century navigators. 
 The doctor, like the skippers of the fishing- 
 craft, must sometimes sail by guess and 
 hearsay, by recollection and old rhymes. 
 
 The gusts and great waves of open water 
 — of the free, wide sea, I mean, over which 
 a ship may safely drive while the weather 
 exhausts its evil mood — are menace enough 
 for the stoutest heart. But the Labrador 
 voyage is inshore — a winding course among 
 the islands, or a straight one from headland 
 to headland, of a coast off which reefs lie 
 thick : low-lying, jagged ledges, washed by 
 
A ROUND OF BLEAK COASTS 21 
 
 the sea in heavy weather ; barren hills, 
 rising abruptly — and all isolated — from safe 
 water; sunken rocks, disclosed, upon ap- 
 proach, only by the green swirl above them. 
 They are countless — scattered everywhere, 
 hidden and disclosed. They lie in the 
 mouths of harbours, they lie close to the 
 coast, they lie offshore; they run twenty 
 miles out to sea. Here is no plain sailing ; 
 the skipper must be sure of the way — or 
 choose it gingerly : else the hidden rock 
 will inevitably " pick him up." 
 Recently the doctor was " picked up." 
 " Oh, yes," says he, with interest. " An 
 uncharted rock. It took two of the three 
 blades of the propeller. But, really, you'd 
 be surprised to know how well the ship got 
 along with one ! " 
 
 To know the submerged rocks of one 
 harbour and the neighbouring coast, how- 
 ever evil the place, is small accomplishment. 
 The Newfoundland lad of seven years would 
 count himself his father's shame if he failed 
 
22 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 in so little. High tide and low tide, quiet 
 sea and heavy swell, he will know where he 
 can take the punt — the depth of water, to 
 an inch, which overlies the danger spots. 
 But here are a hundred harbours — a thou- 
 sand miles of coast — with reefs and islands 
 scattered like dust the length of it. The 
 man who sails the Labrador must know 
 it all like his own back yard — not in 
 sunny weather alone, but in the night, when 
 the headlands are like black clouds ahead, 
 and in the mist, when the noise of break- 
 ers tells him all that he may know of his 
 whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray 
 distance, a thud and swish from a hidden 
 place : the one is his beacon, the other his 
 fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the doctor 
 gets along. 
 
 You may chart rocks, and beware of 
 them ; but — it is a proverb on the coast — 
 " there's no chart for icebergs." The Labra- 
 dor current is charged with them — hard, 
 dead- white glacier ice from the Arctic: 
 
A ROUND OF BLEAK COASTS 23 
 
 massive bergSj innumerable, all the while 
 shifting with tide and current and wind. 
 What with floes and bergs — vast fields of 
 drift-ice — the way north in the spring is 
 most perilous. The same bergs — widely- 
 scattered, diminished in number, dwarfed 
 by the milder climate — give the transatlantic 
 passenger evil dreams : somewhere in the 
 night, somewhere in the mist, thinks he, they 
 may lie ; and he shudders. The skipper of 
 the Labrador craft hnows that they lie thick 
 around him : there is no surmise ; when the 
 night fell, when the fog closed in, there were 
 a hundred to be counted from the masthead. 
 
 Violent winds are always to be feared — 
 swift, overwhelming hurricanes : winds that 
 catch the unwary. They are not frequent ; 
 but they do blow — will again blow, no man 
 can tell when. In such a gale, forty vessels 
 were driven on a lee shore ; in another, 
 eighty were wrecked overnight — two thou- 
 sand fishermen cast away, the coast littered 
 with splinters of ships — and, once (it is but 
 
24 DE. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 an incident), a schooner was torn from her 
 anchors and flung on the rocks forty feet 
 above the high-water mark. These are ex- 
 ceptional storms; the common Labrador 
 gale is not so violent, but evil enough in its 
 own way. It is a northeaster, of which the 
 barometer more often than not gives fair 
 warning ; day after day it blows, cold, wet, 
 foggy, dispiriting, increasing in violence, 
 subsiding, returning again, until courage 
 and strength are both worn out. 
 
 Eeefs, drift-ice, wind and sea — and over 
 all the fog : thick, wide-spread, persistent, 
 swift in coming, mysterious in movement ; 
 it compounds the dangers. It blinds men — 
 they curse it, while they grope along: a 
 desperate business, indeed, thus to run by 
 guess where positive knowledge of the way 
 merely mitigates the peril. There are days 
 when the fog lies like a thick blanket on the 
 face of the sea, hiding the head-sails from 
 the man at the wheel ; it is night on deck, 
 and broad day — with the sun in a blue sky 
 
A BOUND OF BLEAK COASTS 25 
 
 — at the masthead ; the schooners are some- 
 times steered by a man aloft. The Always 
 Loaded, sixty tons and bound home with a 
 cargo that did honour to her name, struck 
 one of the outlying islands so suddenly, so 
 violently, that the lookout in the bow, who 
 had been peering into the mist, was pitched 
 headlong into the surf. The Daughter, run- 
 ning blind with a fair, light wind — she had 
 been lost for a day — ran full tilt into a cliff ; 
 the men ran forward from the soggy gloom 
 of the after-deck into — bright sunshine at 
 the bow ! It is the fog that wrecks ships. 
 
 " Oh, I runned her ashore," says the cast- 
 away skipper. " Thick ? Why, sure, 'twas 
 thick ! " 
 
 So the men who sail that coast hate fog, 
 fear it, avoid it when they can, which is sel- 
 dom ; they are not afraid of wind and sea, 
 but there are times when they shake in their 
 sea-boots, if the black fog catches them out 
 of harbour. 
 
Ill 
 
 SHIPS in PERIL 
 
 IT is to be remarked that a wreck on the 
 Labrador coast excites no wide surprise. 
 Never a season passes but some craft 
 are cast away. But that is merely the for- 
 tune of sailing those waters — a fortune 
 which the mission-doctor accepts with a 
 glad heart : it provides him with an inter- 
 esting succession of adventures ; life is not 
 tame. Most men — I hesitate to say all — 
 have been wrecked ; every man, woman, and 
 child who has sailed the Labrador has nar- 
 rowly escaped, at least. And the fashion 
 of that escape is sometimes almost incredi- 
 ble. 
 
 The schooner AlVs Well (which is a ficti- 
 tious name) was helpless in the wind and sea 
 and whirling snow of a great blizzard. At 
 dusk she was driven inshore — no man knew 
 26 
 
SHIPS IN PERIL 27 
 
 where. Strange cliffs loomed in the snow 
 ahead ; breakers — they were within stone's 
 throw — flashed and thundered to port and 
 starboard ; the ship was driving swiftly into 
 the surf. When she was fairly upon the 
 rocks, Skipper John, then a hand aboard 
 (it was he who told me the story), ran be- 
 low and tumbled into his bunk, believing it 
 to be the better place to drown in. 
 
 " "Well, lads," said he to the men in the 
 forecastle, " we got t' go this time. 'Tis no 
 use goin' on deck." 
 
 But the ship drove through a tickle no 
 wider than twice her beam and came sud- 
 denly into the quiet water of a harbour ! 
 
 The sealing-schooner Right and Tight 
 struck on the Fish Rocks off Cape Charles 
 in the dusk of a northeast gale. It is a 
 jagged, black reef, outlying and isolated; 
 the seas wash over it in heavy weather. It 
 was a bitter gale ; there was ice in the sea, 
 and the wind was wild and thick with snow ; 
 she was driving before it — wrecked, blind, 
 
28 DE. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 utterly lost. The breakers flung her on the 
 reef, broke her back, crunched her, swept 
 the splinters on. Forty-two men were of a 
 sudden drowned in the sea beyond ; but the 
 skipper was left clinging to the rock in a 
 swirl of receding water. 
 
 " Us seed un there in the marnin'," said 
 the old man of Cape Charles who told me 
 the story. " He were stickin' to it like a 
 mussel, with the sea breakin' right over un ! 
 'Cod ! he were ! " 
 
 He laughed and shook his head ; that was 
 a tribute to the strength and courage with 
 which the man on the reef had withstood 
 the icy breakers through the night. 
 
 " Look ! us couldn't get near un," he went 
 on. "'Twas clear enough t' see, but the 
 wind was blowin' wonderful, an' the seas 
 was too big for the skiff. Sure, I hnows 
 that ; for us tried it. 
 
 " * Leave us build a fire ! ' says my woman. 
 * Leave us build a fire on the head ! ' says 
 she. ' 'Twill let un know they's folk lookin' 
 
SHIPS IN PEEIL 29 
 
 " 'Twas a wonderful big fire us set ; an' it 
 kep' us warm, so us set there all day watchin' 
 the skipper o' the Right an* Tight on Fish 
 Kocks. The big seas jerked un loose an' 
 flung un about, an' many a one washed right 
 over un ; but nar a sea could carry un off. 
 'Twas a wonderful sight t' see un knocked 
 off his feet, an' scramble round an' cotch 
 hold somewheres else. 'Cod ! it were — the 
 way that man stuck t' them slippery rocks 
 all day long ! " 
 
 He laughed again — not heartlessly ; it 
 was the only way in which he could express 
 his admiration. 
 
 " We tried the skiff again afore dark," he 
 continued ; " but 'twasn't no use. The seas 
 was too big. Sure, he knowed that so well 
 as we. So us had t' leave un there all night. 
 
 "* He'll never be there in the marnin',' 
 says my woman. 
 
 " ' You wait,' says I, * an' you'll see. I'm 
 thinkin' he will.' 
 
 "An' he was, zur — right there on Fish 
 Kocks, same as ever ; still stickin' on like the 
 
30 DR. GRENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 toughest ol' mussel ever you tasted. Sure, 
 I had t' rub me eyes when I looked ; but 
 'twas he, never fear — 'twas he, stickin' there 
 like a mussel. But there was no gettin' un 
 then. Us watched un all that day. 'Twas 
 dark afore us got un ashore. 
 
 " ' You come nigh it that time,' says I. 
 
 " ' I'll have t' come a sight nigher,' says 
 he, ' afore / goes ! ' " 
 
 The man had been on the reef more than 
 forty-eight hours ! 
 
 The ArTTvy Lass, bound north, was lost 
 in the fog. They hove her to. All hands 
 knew that she lay somewhere near the 
 coast. The skipper needed a sight of the 
 rocks — just a glimpse of some headland or 
 island — to pick the course. It was im- 
 portant that he should have it. There 
 was an iceberg floating near ; it was mass- 
 ive ; it appeared to be steady — and the sea 
 was quiet. From the top of it, he thought 
 (the fog was dense and seemed to be lying 
 low), he might see far and near. His crew 
 
SHIPS IN PERIL 31 
 
 put hira on the ice with the quarter-boat 
 and then hung off a bit. He clambered up 
 the side of the berg. Near the summit he 
 had to cut his foothold with an axe. This 
 was unfortunate; for he gave the great 
 white mass one blow too many. It split 
 under his feet. He fell headlong into the 
 widening crevice. But he was apparently 
 not a whit the worse for it when his boat's 
 crew picked him up. 
 
 A schooner — ^let her be called the Good 
 Fortune — running through dense fog, with 
 a fair, high wind and all sail set, struck a 
 " twin " iceberg bow on. She was wrecked 
 in a flash : her jib-boom was rammed into 
 her forecastle ; her bows were stove in ; her 
 topmast snapped and came crashing to the 
 deck. Then she fell away from the ice; 
 whereupon the wind caught her, turned her 
 about, and drove her, stern foremost, into a 
 narrow passage which lay between the two 
 towering sections of the "twin." She 
 scraped along, striking the ice on either 
 
32 DK. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 side; and with every blow, down came 
 fragments from above. 
 
 " It rained chunks," said the old skipper 
 who told me the story. "You couldn't 
 tell, look ! what minute you'd get knocked 
 on the head." 
 
 The falling ice made great havoc with 
 the deck-works ; the boats were crushed ; 
 the "house" was stove in; the deck was 
 littered with ice. But the Good Fortune 
 drove safely through, was rigged with 
 makeshift sails, made harbour, was refitted 
 by all hands — the Labradormen can build 
 a ship with an axe — and continued her 
 voyage. 
 
 I have said that the JN'ewfoundlanders 
 occasionally navigate by means of old 
 rhymes; and this brings me to the case 
 of Zachariah, the skipper of the Seavenly 
 Rest. He was a Newf'un'lander. Neither 
 wind, fog nor a loppy sea could turn his 
 blood to water. He was a Newf'un'lander 
 of the hardshell breed. So he sailed the 
 
SHIPS IN PERIL 33 
 
 Heavenly Best without a chart. To be 
 sure, he favoured the day for getting along, 
 but he ran through the night when he was 
 crowding south, and blithely took his 
 chance with islands of ice and rock alike. 
 He had some faith in a "telltale," had 
 Zachariah, but he scorned charts. It was 
 his boast that if he could not carry the 
 harbours and headlands and shallows of 
 five hundred miles of hungry coast in his 
 head he should give up the Heavenly Rest 
 and sail a paddle-punt for a living. It 
 was well that he could — well for the ship 
 and the crew and the folk at home. For, 
 at the time of which I write, the Besty too 
 light in ballast to withstand a gusty breeze, 
 was groping through the fog for harbour 
 from a gale which threatened a swift de- 
 scent. It was " thick as bags," with a rising 
 wind running in from the sea, and the surf 
 breaking and hissing within hearing to 
 leeward. 
 
 " We be handy t' Hollow Harbour," said 
 Zachariah. 
 
84 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 " Is you sure, skipper ? " asked the cook. 
 
 " Sure," said Zachariah. 
 
 The He<menly Rest was in desperate case. 
 She was running in — pursuing an unfalter- 
 ing course for an unfamiliar, rocky shore. 
 The warning of the surf sounded in every 
 man's ears. It was imperative that her 
 true position should soon be determined. 
 The skipper was perched far forward, peer- 
 ing through the fog for a sight of the coast. 
 
 " Sure, an' I hopes," said the man at the 
 wheel, " that she woan't break her nose on 
 a rock afore the ol' man sees un." 
 
 "Joe Bett's P'int!" exclaimed the 
 skipper. 
 
 Dead ahead, and high in the air, a mass 
 of rock loomed through the mist. The 
 skipper had recognized it in a flash. He 
 ran aft and took the wheel. The HecmenJ/y 
 Best sheered off and ran to sea. 
 
 " We'll run in t' Hollow Harbour," said 
 the skipper. 
 
 " Has you ever been there ? " said the 
 man who had surrendered the wheel. 
 
SHIPS IN PERIL 35 
 
 "Noa, b'y," the skipper answered, "but 
 I'll get there, whatever." 
 
 The nose of the Heavenly Best was turned 
 shoreward. Sang the skipper, humming it 
 to himself in a rasping sing-song : 
 
 " "When Joe Bett's P'int you is abreast, 
 Dane's Rock bears due west. 
 West-nor'west you must steer, 
 'Til Brimstone Head do appear. 
 
 " The tickle's narrow, not very wide : 
 The deepest water's on the starboard side 
 When in the harbour you is shot, 
 Four fathoms you has got." 
 
 The old song was chart enough for Skip- 
 per Zachariah. Three times the Heavenly 
 Rest ran in and out. Then she sighted 
 Dane's Rock, which bore due west, true 
 enough. West-nor'west was the course she 
 followed, running blindly through the fog 
 and heeling to the wind. Brimstone Head 
 appeared in due time ; and in due time the 
 rocks of the tickle — that narrow entrance 
 to the harbour — appeared in vague, forbid- 
 ding form to port and starboard. The 
 
36 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 schooner ran to the starboard for the 
 deeper water. Into the harbour she shot ; 
 and there they dropped anchor, caring not 
 at all whether the water was four or forty 
 fathoms, for it was deep enough. Through 
 the night the gale tickled the topmasts, but 
 the ship rode smoothly at her anchors, and 
 Skipper Zachariah's stentorian sleep was 
 not disturbed by any sudden call to duty. 
 
 And the doctor of the Deep Sea Mission 
 has had many a similar experience. 
 
TV 
 DESPERA TE NEED 
 
 IT was to these rough waters that Dr. 
 Grenfell came when the need of the 
 folk reached his ears and touched his 
 heart. Before that, in the remoter parts of 
 ^Newfoundland and on the coast of Labrador 
 there were no doctors. The folk depended 
 for healing upon traditional cures, upon old 
 women who worked charms, upon remedies 
 ingeniously devised to meet the need of the 
 moment, upon deluded persons who pre- 
 scribed medicines of the most curious de- 
 scription, upon a rough-and-ready surgery of 
 their own, in which the implements of the 
 kitchen and of the splitting-stage served a 
 useful purpose. For example, there was a 
 misled old fellow who set himself up as a 
 healer in a lonely cove of the INewfound- 
 land coast, where he lived a hermit, verily 
 37 
 
38 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 believing, it may be, in the glory of his 
 call and in the blessed efficacy of his min- 
 istrations ; his cure for consumption — it was 
 a tragic failure, in one case, at least — was a 
 bull's heart, dried and powdered and ad- 
 ministered with faith and regularity. Else- 
 where there was a man, stricken with a 
 mortal ailment, who, upon the recom- 
 mendation of a kindly neighbour, regu- 
 larly dosed himself with an ill-flavoured 
 liquid obtained by boiling cast-off pulley- 
 blocks in water. There was also a father 
 who most hopefully attempted to cure his 
 little lad of diphtheria by wrapping his 
 throat with a split herring; but, unhap- 
 pily, as he has said, "the wee feller 
 choked hisself t' death," notwithstand- 
 ing. There was another father — a man 
 of grim, heroic disposition — whose little 
 daughter chanced to freeze her feet to 
 the very bone in midwinter ; when he 
 perceived that a surgical operation could 
 no longer be delayed, he cut them off 
 with an axe. 
 
DESPERATE NEED 39 
 
 An original preventative of sea-boils — 
 with which the fishermen are cruelly 
 afflicted upon the hands and wrists in 
 raw weather — was evolved by a frowsy- 
 headed old Labradorman of serious parts. 
 
 " / never has none," said he, in the fashion 
 of superior fellows. 
 "ISTo?" 
 
 " Nar a one. No, zur ! Not me ! " 
 A glance of interested inquiry elicited 
 no response. It but prolonged a large 
 silence. 
 
 " Have you never had a sea-boil ? " with 
 the note and sharp glance of incredulity. 
 " Not me. Not since I got my cure." 
 " And what might that cure be ? " 
 " Well, zur," was the amazing reply, " I 
 cuts my nails on a Monday." 
 
 It must be said, however, that the New- 
 foundland government did provide a phy- 
 sician — of a sort. Every summer he was 
 sent north with the mail-boat, which made 
 not more than six trips, touching here and 
 
40 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 there at long intervals, and, of a hard 
 season, failing altogether to reach the 
 farthest ports. While the boat waited — 
 an hour, or a half, as might be — the 
 doctor went ashore to cure the sick, if 
 he chanced to be in the humour; other- 
 wise the folk brought the sick aboard, 
 where they were painstakingly treated or 
 not, as the doctor's humour went. The 
 government seemed never to inquire too 
 minutely into the qualifications and char- 
 acter of its appointee. The incumbent for 
 many years — the folk thank God that he 
 is dead — was an inefficient, ill-tempered, 
 cruel man ; if not the very man himself, 
 he was of a kind with the Newfoundland 
 physician who ran a flag of warning to 
 his masthead when he set out to get very 
 drunk. 
 
 The mail-boat dropped anchor one night 
 in a far-away harbour of the Labrador, 
 where there was desperate need of a 
 doctor to ease a man's pain. They had 
 waited a long time, patiently, day after 
 
DESPERATE NEED 41 
 
 day, I am told; and when at last the 
 mail-boat came, the man's skipper put 
 out in glad haste to fetch the govern- 
 ment physician. 
 
 " He've turned in," they told him aboard. 
 
 What did that matter? The skipper 
 roused the doctor. 
 
 " We've a sick man ashore, zur," said he, 
 " an' he wants you t' come " 
 
 "What I" roared the doctor. "Think 
 I'm going to turn out this time of night ? " 
 
 "Sure, zur," stammered the astounded 
 skipper. " I — I — s'pose so. He's very sick, 
 zur. He's coughin' " 
 
 " Let him cough himself to death ! " said 
 the doctor. 
 
 Turn out ? ISTot he ! Rather, he turned 
 over in his warm berth. It is to be assumed 
 that the sick man died in pain ; it is to be 
 assumed, too, that the physician continued 
 a tranquil slumber, for the experience was 
 not exceptional. 
 
 " Let 'em die ! " he had said more than 
 once. 
 
42 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 The government had provided for the 
 transportation of sick fishermen from the 
 Labrador coast to their homes in Newfound- 
 land; these men were of the great New- 
 foundland fleet of cod-fishing schooners, 
 which fish the Labrador seas in the summer. 
 It needed only the doctor's word to get the 
 boon. Once a fisherman brought his con- 
 sumptive son aboard — a young lad, with but 
 a few weeks of life left. The boy wanted 
 his mother, who was at home in Newfound- 
 land. 
 
 " Ay, he's fair siclc for his mother," said 
 the father to the doctor. " I'm askin' you, 
 zur, t' take un home on the mail-boat." 
 
 The doctor was in a perverse mood that 
 day. He would not take the boy. 
 
 "Sure, zur," said the fisherman, "the 
 schooner's not goin' 'til fall, an' I've no 
 money, an' the lad's dyin'." 
 
 But still the doctor would not. 
 
 "I'm thinkin', zur," said the fisherman, 
 steadily, " that you're not quite knowin' that 
 the lad wants t' see his mother afore he dies." 
 
DESPERATE NEED 43 
 
 The doctor laughed. 
 
 " We'll have a laugh at you^"^ cried the 
 indignant fisherman, "when you comes t' 
 die ! " 
 
 Then he cursed the doctor most heartily 
 and took his son ashore. He was right — 
 they did have a laugh at the doctor ; the 
 whole coast might have laughed when he 
 came to die. Being drunk on a stormy 
 night, he fell down the companionway and 
 broke his neck. 
 
 Deep in the bays and up the rivers south 
 of Hamilton Inlet, which is itself rather 
 heavily timbered, there is wood to be had 
 for the cutting ; but " down t' Chidley " — 
 which is the northernmost point of the Lab- 
 rador coast — the whole world is bare ; there 
 is neither tree nor shrub, shore nor inland, to 
 grace the naked rock ; the land lies bleak 
 and desolate. But, once, a man lived there 
 the year round. I don't know why; it is 
 inexplicable ; but I am sure that the shift- 
 less fellow and his wife had never an ink- 
 
44 DK. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 ling that the circumstance was otherwise 
 than commonplace and reasonable ; and the 
 child, had he lived, would have continued to 
 dwell there, boy and man, in faith that the 
 earth was good to live in. One hard winter 
 the man burnt all his wood long before the 
 schooners came up from the lower coast. It 
 was a desperate strait to come to ; but I am 
 sure that he regarded his situation with sur- 
 prising phlegm ; doubtless he slept as sound, 
 if not as warm, as before. There was no 
 more wood to be had ; so he burnt the fur- 
 niture, every stick of it, and when that was 
 gone, began on the frame of his house — a 
 turf hut, builded under a kindly cliff, shel- 
 tered somewhat from the winds from the 
 frozen sea. As, rafter by rafter, the frame 
 was withdrawn, he cut off the roof and 
 folded in the turf walls ; thus, day by day, 
 the space within dwindled ; his last fire was 
 to consume the last of his shelter — which, 
 no doubt, troubled him not at all ; for the 
 day was not yet come. It is an ugly story. 
 When they were found in the spring, the 
 
DESPERATE NEED 45 
 
 woman lay dying on a heap of straw in a 
 muddy corner — she was afliicted with hip- 
 disease — and the house was tumbling about 
 her ears ; the child, new born, had long ago 
 frozen on its mother's breast. 
 
 A doctor of the Newfoundland outports 
 was once called to a little white cottage 
 where three children lay sick of diphtheria. 
 He was the family physician ; that is to say, 
 the fisherman paid him so much by the year 
 for medical attendance. But the injection 
 of antitoxin is a " surgical operation " and 
 therefore not provided for by the annual 
 fee. 
 
 "This," said the doctor, "will cost you 
 two dollars an injection, John." 
 
 " Oh, ay, zur," was the ready reply. " I'll 
 pay you, zur. Go on, zur ! " 
 
 " But you know my rule, John — no pay, 
 no work. I can't break it for you, you 
 know, or I'd have to break it for half the 
 coast." 
 
 "Oh, ay! 'Tis all right. I wants un 
 
46 DK. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 cured. I'll pay you when I sells me 
 fish." 
 
 "But you know my rule, John — cash 
 down." 
 
 The fisherman had but four dollars — no 
 more ; nor could he obtain any more, though 
 the doctor gave him ample time. I am sure 
 that he loved his children dearly, but, un- 
 fortunately, he had no more than four dol- 
 lars; and there was no other doctor for 
 fifty miles up and down the coast. 
 
 "Four dollars," said the doctor, "two 
 children. Which ones shall it be, John ? " 
 
 Which ones ? Why, of course, after all, 
 the doctor had himself to make the choice. 
 John couldn't. So the doctor chose the 
 " handiest " ones. The other one died. 
 
 " Well," said John, unresentf uUy, the day 
 after the funeral, " I s'pose a doctor haves a 
 right t' be paid for what he does. But," 
 much puzzled, " 'tis kind o' queer ! " 
 
 This is not a work of fiction. These inci- 
 dents are true. I set them down here 
 
DESPERATE NEED 47 
 
 for the purpose of adequately showing the 
 need of such a practitioner as "Wilfred T. 
 Grenfell in the sphere in which he now 
 labours. My point is — that if in the more 
 settled places, where physicians might be 
 summoned, such neglect and brutality could 
 exist, in what a lamentable condition were 
 the folk of the remoter parts, where even 
 money could not purchase healing ! Nor 
 are these true stories designed to reflect upon 
 the regular practitioners of Newfoundland ; 
 nor should they create a false impression 
 concerning them. I have known many no- 
 ble physicians in practice there ; indeed, I am 
 persuaded that heroism and devotion are, 
 perhaps, their distinguishing characteristics. 
 God knows, there is little enough gain to 
 be had ! God knows, too, that that little is 
 hard earned ! These men do their work 
 well and courageously, and as adequately 
 as may be ; it is on the coasts beyond that 
 the mission-doctor labours. 
 
A HELPING HAND 
 
 WHILE the poor "liveyeres" and 
 Newfoundland fishermen thus de- 
 pended upon the mail-boat doc- 
 tor and their own strange inventions for re- 
 lief, Wilfred Grenfell, this well-born, Ox- 
 ford-bred young Englishman, was walking 
 the London hospitals. He was athletic, ad- 
 venturous, dogged, unsentimental, merry, 
 kind ; moreover — and most happily — he was 
 used to the sea, and he loved it. It chanced 
 one night that he strayed into the Taber- 
 nacle in East London, where D. L. Moody, 
 the American evangelist, was preaching. 
 "When he came out he had resolved to make 
 his religion " practical." There was noth- 
 ing violent in this — no fevered, ill-judged 
 determination to martyr himself at all costs. 
 It was a quiet resolve to make the best of 
 48 
 
A HELPING HAND 49 
 
 his life — which he would have done at any 
 rate, I think, for he was a young English- 
 man of good breeding and the finest im- 
 pulses. At once he cast about for " some 
 way in which he could satisfy the aspira- 
 tions of a young medical man, and combine 
 with this a desire for adventure and definite 
 Christian work." 
 
 I had never before met a missionary of 
 that frank type. " Why," I exclaimed to 
 him, off the coast of Labrador, not long 
 ago, "you seem to like this sort of 
 life ! " 
 
 We were aboard the mission steamer, 
 bound north under full steam and all sail. 
 He had been in feverish haste to reach the 
 northern harbours, where, as he knew, the 
 sick were watching for his coming. The 
 fair wind, the rush of the little steamer on 
 her way, pleased him. 
 
 " Oh," said he, somewhat impatiently, 
 " 7'm not a martyr." 
 
 So he found what he sought. After ap- 
 plying certain revolutionary ideas to Sun- 
 
50 DR. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 day-school work in the London slums, in 
 which a horizontal bar and a set of boxing- 
 gloves for a time held equal place with the 
 Bible and the hymn-book, he joined the 
 staff of the Royal I^ational Mission to 
 Deep Sea Fishermen, and established the 
 medical mission to the fishermen of the 
 North Sea. "When that work was organ- 
 ized — when the fight was gone out of it — 
 he sought a harder task ; he is of that type, 
 then extraordinary but now familiar, which 
 finds no delight where there is no difficulty. 
 In the spring of 1892 he set sail from Great 
 Yarmouth Harbour for Labrador in a 
 ninety-ton schooner. Since then, in the 
 face of hardship, peril, and prejudice, he 
 has, with a light heart and strong purpose, 
 healed the sick, preached the Word, clothed 
 the naked, fed the starving, given shelter to 
 them that had no roof, championed the 
 wronged — in all, devotedly fought evil, pov- 
 erty, oppression, and disease ; for he is bit- 
 terly intolerant of those things. And 
 
 " It's been jolly good fun I " says he. 
 
A HELPING HAND 51 
 
 The immediate inspiration of this work 
 was the sermon preached in East London 
 by D. L. Moody. Later in life — indeed, 
 soon before the great evangelist's death — 
 Dr. Grenfell thanked him for that sermon. 
 " And what have you been doing since ? " 
 was Mr. Moody's prompt and searching 
 question. " What ha/ve you heen doing 
 since ? " Dr. Grenfell might with pro- 
 priety and effect have placed in Mr. 
 Moody's hands such letters as those which 
 I reprint, saying: "What have I been 
 doing since ? I have been kept busy, sir, 
 responding to such calls as these.". Such 
 calls as these : 
 
 Docter plase I whant to see you. Doeher 
 sir have you got a leg if you have Will you 
 plase send him Down Praps he may fet and 
 you would oblig. 
 
 Eeverance dr. Grandfell. Dear sir we 
 are expecting you hup and we would like 
 for you to come so quick as you can for my 
 dater is very sick with a very large sore 
 under her left harm we emenangin that the 
 old is two enchis deep and tow enches wide 
 
52 DR. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 plase com as quick as you can to save life 
 I remains yours truely. 
 
 Doeker, — Please wel you send me som- 
 ting for the pain in my feet and what you 
 proismed to send my little boy. Docker I 
 am almost cripple, it is up my hips, I can 
 hardly walk. This is my housban is gain- 
 ing you this note from 
 
 To Dr. Gransfield 
 
 Dear honrabel Sir, 
 I would wish to ask you Sir, if you would 
 Be pleased to give me and my wife a littel 
 poor close. I was going in the Bay to cut 
 some wood. But I am all amost blind and 
 cant Do much so if you would spear me 
 some Sir I should Be very thankf uU to you 
 Sir. 
 
 I got Bad splotches all over my Body and 
 
 i dont know what the cause of it is. Please 
 
 Have you got anything for it. i Have'nt 
 
 ot any money to Pay you now for anything 
 
 ut i wont forget to Pay you when i gets 
 
 the money. 
 
 doctor — i have a compleant i ham weak 
 with wind on the chest, weaknes all all over 
 me up in my harm. 
 
 Dear Dr. Grenfell. 
 I would like for you to Have time to 
 
A HELPING HAND 53 
 
 come Down to my House Before you leaves 
 to go to St. Anthony. My little Girl is 
 very Bad. it seems all in Her neck. Cant 
 Ply her Neck forward if do she nearly goes 
 in the fits, i dont know what it is the 
 matter with Her myself. But if you see 
 Her you would know what the matter with 
 Her. Please send a Word By the Bearer 
 what gives you this note and let me know 
 where you will have time to come down to 
 my House, i lives down the Bay a Place 
 called Berry Head. 
 
 "What have you been doing since?" 
 Dr. Grenfell has not been idle. There is 
 now a mission hospital at St. Anthony, near 
 the extreme northeast point of the New- 
 foundland coast. There is another, well- 
 equipped and commodious, at Battle Har- 
 bour — a rocky island lying out from the 
 Labrador coast near the Strait of Belle Isle 
 — which is open the year round ; when the 
 writer was last on the coast, it was in 
 charge of Dr. Cluny McPherson, a coura- 
 geous young physician, Newfoundland-born, 
 who went six hundred miles up the coast by 
 dog-team in the dead of winter, finding shel- 
 ter where he might, curing whom he could 
 
54 DK. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 — everywhere seeking out those who needed 
 him, caring not a whit, it appears, for the 
 peril and hardship of the long white road. 
 There is a third at Indian Harbour, half- 
 way up the coast, which is open through 
 the fishing season. It is conducted with 
 the care and precision of a London hospital 
 — admirably kept, well-ordered, efficient. 
 The physician in charge is Dr. George H. 
 Simpson — a wiry, keen, brave little English- 
 man, who goes about in an open boat, what- 
 ever the distance, whatever the weather ; he 
 is a man of splendid courage and sympathy : 
 the fishing-folk love him for his kind heart 
 and for the courage with which he responds 
 to their every call. There is also the little 
 hospital steamer Strathcona, in which Dr. 
 Grenfell makes the round of all the coast, 
 from the time of the break-up until the fall 
 gales have driven the fishing-schooners 
 home to harbour. 
 
VI 
 
 FAITH and DUTY 
 
 WHEN Dr. Grenfell first appeared 
 on the coast, I am told, the folk 
 thought him a madman of some 
 beniffn description. He knew nothing of 
 the reefs, the tides, the currents, cared noth- 
 ing, apparently, for the winds ; he sailed 
 with the confidence and reckless courage of 
 a Labrador skipper. Fearing at times to 
 trust his schooner in unknown waters, he 
 went about in a whale-boat, and so hard did 
 he drive her that he wore her out in a single 
 season. She was capsized with all hands, 
 once driven out to sea, many times nearly 
 swamped, once blown on the rocks ; never 
 before was a boat put to such tasks on that 
 coast, and at the end of it she was wrecked 
 beyond repair. E'ext season he appeared 
 with a little steam-launch, the Princess May 
 — ^her beam was eight feet ! — in which he 
 55 
 
56 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 not only journeyed from St. Johns to Lab- 
 rador, to the astonishment of the whole 
 colony, but sailed the length of that bitter 
 coast, passiDg into the gulf and safely out 
 again, and pushing to the very farthest set- 
 tlements in the north. Late in the fall, upon 
 the return journey to St. Johns in stormy 
 weather, she was reported lost, and many a 
 skipper, I suppose, wondered that she had 
 lived so long ; but she weathered a gale that 
 bothered the mail-boat, and triumphantly 
 made St. Johns, after as adventurous a voy- 
 age, no doubt, as ever a boat of her measure 
 survived. 
 
 "Sure," said a skipper, "I don't know 
 how she done it. The Lord," he added, 
 piously, "must kape an eye on that 
 
 There is a new proverb on the coast. The 
 folk say, when a great wind blows, " This'll 
 bring Grenfell ! " Often it does. He is im- 
 patient of delay, fretted by inaction ; a gale 
 is the wind for him — a wind to take him 
 
FAITH AND DUTY 67 
 
 swiftly towards the place ahead. Had he 
 been a weakling, he would long ago have 
 died on the coast ; had he been a coward, a 
 multitude of terrors would long ago have 
 driven him to a life ashore; had he been 
 anything but a true man and tender, indeed, 
 he would long ago have retreated under the 
 suspicion and laughter of the folk. But he 
 has outsailed the Labrador skippers — out- 
 dared them — done deeds of courage under 
 their very eyes that they would shiver to 
 contemplate, — never in a foolhardy spirit; 
 always with the object of kindly service. 
 So he has the heart and willing hand of 
 every honest man on the Labrador — and of 
 none more than of the men of his crew, who 
 take the chances with him ; they are wholly 
 devoted. 
 
 One of his engineers, for example, once 
 developed the unhappy habit of knocking 
 the cook down. 
 
 " You must keep your temper," said the 
 doctor. " This won't do, you know." 
 
 But there came an unfortunate day when, 
 
58 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 being out of temper, the engineer again 
 knocked the cook down. 
 
 " This is positively disgraceful ! " said the 
 doctor. " I can't keep a quarrelsome fellow 
 aboard the mission-ship. Remember that, 
 if you will, when next you feel tempted to 
 strike the cook." 
 
 The engineer protested that he would 
 never again lay hands on the cook, what- 
 ever the provocation. But again he lost his 
 temper, and down went the poor cook, flat 
 on his back. 
 
 ** I'll discharge you," said the doctor, an- 
 grily, " at the end of the cruise ! " 
 
 The engineer pleaded for another chance. 
 He was denied. From day to day he re- 
 newed his plea, but to no purpose, and at 
 last the crew came to the conclusion that 
 something really ought to be done for the 
 engineer, who was visibly fretting himself 
 thin. 
 
 " Very well," said the doctor to the en- 
 gineer ; " I'll make this agreement with you. 
 If ever again you knock down the cook, I'll 
 
FAITH AND DUTY 69 
 
 put you ashore at the first land we come to, 
 and you may get back to St. Johns as best 
 you can." 
 
 It was a hard alternative. The doctor is 
 not a man to give or take when the bargain 
 has been struck ; the engineer knew that he 
 would surely go ashore somewhere on that 
 desolate coast, whether the land was a bar- 
 ren island or a frequented harbour, if ever 
 again the cook tempted him beyond endur- 
 ance. 
 
 " I'll stand by it, sir," he said, neverthe- 
 less ; " for I don't want to leave you." 
 
 In the course of time the Princess May 
 was wrecked or worn out. Then came the 
 Julia Sheridan^ thirty -five feet long, which 
 the mission doctor bought while she yet lay 
 under water from her last wreck ; he raised 
 her, refitted her with what money he had, 
 and pursued his venturesome and beneficent 
 career, until she, too, got beyond so hard a 
 service. Many a gale she weathered, off 
 " the worst coast in the world " — often, in- 
 
60 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 deed, in thick, wild weather, the doctor him- 
 self thought the little craft would go down ; 
 but she is now happily superannuated, car- 
 rying the mail in the quieter waters of Ham- 
 ilton Inlet. iN'ext came the SirBonald — a 
 stout ship, which in turn disappeared, 
 crushed in the ice. The 8trathcona, with a 
 hospital amidships, is now doing duty ; and 
 she will continue to go up and down the 
 coast, in and out of the inlets, until she in 
 her turn finds the ice and the wind and the 
 rocks too much for her. 
 
 " 'Tis bound t' come, soon or late," said a 
 cautious friend of the mission. " He drives 
 her too hard. He've a right t' do what he 
 likes with his own life, I s'pose, but he've a 
 call t' remember that the crew has folks t' 
 home." 
 
 But the mission doctor is not inconsider- 
 ate ; he is in a hurry — the coast is long, the 
 season short, the need such as to wring a 
 man's heart. Every new day holds an op- 
 portunity for doing a good deed — not if he 
 
FAITH AND DUTY 61 
 
 dawdles in the harbours when a gale is 
 abroad, bat only if he passes swiftly from 
 place to place, with a brave heart meeting 
 the dangers as they come. He is the only 
 doctor to visit the Labrador shore of the 
 Gulf, the Strait shore of Newfoundland, 
 the populous east coast of the northern 
 peninsula of Newfoundland, the only doc- 
 tor known to the Esquimaux and poor " live- 
 yeres " of the northern coast of Labrador, 
 the only doctor most of the " liveyeres " and 
 green-fish catchers of the middle coast can 
 reach, save the hospital physician at Indian 
 Harbour. He has a round of three thousand 
 miles to make. It is no wonder that he 
 " drives " the little steamer — even at full 
 steam, with all sail spread (as I have known 
 him to do), when the fog is thick and the 
 sea is spread with great bergs. 
 
 "I'm in a hurry," he said, with an impa- 
 tient sigh. " The season's late. We must 
 get along." 
 
 We fell in with him at Eed Kay in the 
 
62 DE. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 Strait, in the thick of a heavy gale from 
 the northeast. The wind had blown for two 
 days ; the sea was running high, and still 
 fast rising ; the schooners were huddled in 
 the harbours, with all anchors out, many of 
 them hanging on for dear life, though they 
 lay in shelter. The sturdy little coastal 
 boat, with four times the strength of the 
 Strathcona^ had made hard work of it that 
 day — there was a time when she but held 
 her own off a lee shore in the teeth of the 
 big wind. 
 
 It was drawing on towards night when the 
 doctor came aboard for a surgeon from Bos- 
 ton, a specialist, for whom he had been wait- 
 ing. 
 
 " I see you've steam up," said the captain 
 of the coastal boat. "I hope you're not 
 going out in this, doctor ! " 
 
 " I have some patients at the Battle Har- 
 bour Hospital, waiting for our good friend 
 from Boston," said the doctor, briskly. 
 "I'm in a hurry. Oh, yes, I'm going 
 out ! " 
 
FAITH AND DUTY 63 
 
 " For God's sake, don't ! " said the captain 
 earnestly. 
 
 The doctor's eye chanced to fall on the 
 gentleman from Boston, who was bending 
 over his bag — a fine, fearless fellow, whom 
 the prospect of putting out in that chip of a 
 steamer would not have perturbed, though 
 the doctor may then not have known it. 
 At any rate, as though bethinking himself 
 of something half forgotten, he changed his 
 mind of a sudden. 
 
 " Oh, very well," he said. " I'll wait un- 
 til the gale blows out." 
 
 He managed to wait a day — no longer ; 
 and the wind was still wild, the sea higher 
 than ever ; there was ice in the road, and 
 the fog was dense. Then out he went into 
 the thick of it. He bumped an iceberg, 
 scraped a rock, fairly smothered the steamer 
 with broken water; and at midnight — the 
 most marvellous feat of all — he crept into 
 Battle Harbour through a narrow, difficult 
 passage, and dropped anchor off the mission 
 wharf. 
 
64 DE. GKENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 Doubtless he enjoyed the experience 
 while it lasted — and promptly forgot it, 
 as being commonplace. I have heard of 
 him, caught in the night in a winter's 
 gale of wind and snow, threading a 
 tumultuous, reef-strewn sea, his skipper 
 at the wheel, himself on the bowsprit, 
 guiding the ship by the flash and roar 
 of breakers, while the sea tumbled over 
 him. If the chance passenger who told 
 me the story is to be believed, upon that 
 trying occasion the doctor had the "time 
 of his life." 
 
 "All that man wanted," I told the 
 doctor subsequently, " was, as he says, * to 
 bore a hole in the bottom of the ship and 
 crawl out.' " 
 
 "Why!" exclaimed the doctor, with a 
 laugh of surprise. " He wasn't frightened, 
 was he ? " 
 
 Fear of the sea is quite incomprehensible 
 to this man. The passenger was very much 
 frightened; he vowed never to sail with 
 "that devil" again. But the doctor is 
 
FAITH AND DUTY 65 
 
 very far from being a dare-devil ; though 
 he is, to be sure, a man altogether un- 
 afraid ; it seems to me that his heart can 
 never have known the throb of fear. Per- 
 haps that is in part because he has a blessed 
 lack of imagination, in part, perhaps, be- 
 cause he has a body as sound as ever God 
 gave to a man, and has used it as a man 
 should; but it is chiefly because of his 
 simple and splendid faith that he is an 
 instrument in God's hands — God's to do 
 with as He will, as he would say. His 
 faith is exceptional, I am sure — childlike, 
 steady, overmastering, and withal, if I may 
 so characterize it, healthy. It takes some- 
 thing such as the faith he has to move a 
 man to run a little steamer at full speed in 
 the fog when there is ice on every hand. 
 It is hardly credible, but quite true, and 
 short of the truth : neither wind nor ice 
 nor fog, nor all combined, can keep the 
 Strathcona in harbour when there comes a 
 call for help from beyond. The doctor 
 clambers cheerfully out on the bowsprit 
 
m DR. GRENFELL^S PARISH 
 
 and keeps both eyes open. " As the Lord 
 wills," says he, " whether for wreck or 
 service. I am about His business." 
 
 It is a sublime expression of the old 
 faith. 
 
D 
 
 YII 
 
 THE LIJ^EYERE 
 
 OCTOR GRENFELL'S patients are 
 of three classes. There is first the 
 " liveyere " — the inhabitant of the 
 Labrador coast — the most ignorant and 
 wretched of them all. There is the New- 
 foundland "outporter" — the small fisher- 
 man of the remoter coast, who must depend 
 wholly upon his hook and line for subsist- 
 ence. There is the Labradorman — the 
 Newfoundland fisherman of the better 
 class, who fishes the Labrador coast in 
 the summer season and returns to his 
 home port when the snow begins to fly 
 in the fall. Some description of these 
 three classes is here offered, that the 
 reader may understand the character and 
 condition of the folk among whom Dr. 
 Grenfell labours. 
 
 67 
 
68 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 " As a permanent abode of civilized man," 
 it is written in a very learned if somewhat 
 old-fashioned work, "Labrador is, on the 
 whole, one of the most uninviting spots on 
 the face of the earth." That is putting it 
 altogether too delicately ; there should be 
 no qualification ; the place is a brutal deso- 
 lation. The weather has scoured the coast 
 — a thousand miles of it — as clean as an old 
 bone : it is utterly sterile, save for a tuft or 
 two of hardy grass and wide patches of crisp 
 moss; bare gray rocks, low in the south, 
 towering and craggy in the north, every- 
 where blasted by frost, lie in billowy hills 
 between the froth and clammy mist of the 
 sea and the starved forest at the edge of 
 the inland wilderness. The interior is for- 
 bidding ; few explorers have essayed adven- 
 ture there ; but the Indians — an expiring 
 tribe — and trappers who have caught sight 
 of the " height of land " say that it is for 
 the most part a vast table-land, barren, 
 strewn with enormous boulders, scarce in 
 game, swarming with flies, with vegetation 
 
THE LIVEYEEE 69 
 
 surviving only in the hollows and ravines — 
 a sullen, forsaken waste. 
 
 Those who dwell on the coast are called 
 " liveyeres " because they say, " Oh, ay, zur, 
 I lives yere ! " in answer to the question. 
 These are not to be confounded with the 
 Newfoundland fishermen who sail the Lab- 
 rador seas in the fishing season — an adven- 
 turous, thrifty folk, bright-eyed, hearty in 
 laughter — twenty-five thousand hale men 
 and boys, with many a wife and maid, who 
 come and return again. Less than four 
 thousand poor folk have on the long coast 
 the " permanent abode " of which the learned 
 work speaks — much less, I should think, 
 from the Strait of Belle Isle to Cape Chid- 
 ley. It is an evil fate to be born there : the 
 Newfoundlanders who went north from their 
 better country, the Hudson Bay Company's 
 servants who took wives from the natives, 
 all the chance comers who procrastinated 
 their escape, desperately wronged their pos- 
 terity ; the saving circumstance is the very 
 isolation of the dwelling-place — no man 
 
70 DK. GRENFELL^S PARISH 
 
 knows, no man really knows, that elsewhere 
 the earth is kinder to her children and fairer 
 far than the wind-swept, barren coast to 
 which he is used. They live content, bear- 
 ing many children, in inclemency, in squalor, 
 and, from time to time, in uttermost poverty 
 — such poverty as clothes a child in a trouser 
 leg and feeds babies and strong men alike 
 on nothing but flour and water. They were 
 born there : that is where they came from j 
 that is why they live there. 
 
 " 'Tis a short feast and a long famine," 
 said a northern " liveyere," quite cheerfully ; 
 to him it was just a commonplace fact of 
 life. 
 
 There are degrees of wretchedness : a 
 frame cottage is the habitation of the rich 
 and great where the poor live in turf huts ; 
 and the poor subsist on roots and a paste of 
 flour and water when the rich feast on salt 
 junk. The folk who live near the Strait of 
 Belle Isle and on the gulf shore may be in 
 happier circumstances. To be sure, they 
 
THE LIVEYERE Yl 
 
 know the pinch of famine ; but some — the 
 really well-to-do — are clear of the over- 
 shadowing dread of it. The " liveyeres " of 
 the north dwell in huts, in lonely coves of 
 the bays, remote even from neighbours as 
 ill-cased as themselves ; there they live and 
 laugh and love and suffer and die and bury 
 their dead — alone. To the south, however, 
 there are little settlements in the more 
 sheltered harbours — the largest of not more 
 than a hundred souls — where there is a de- 
 gree of prosperity and of comfort ; potatoes 
 are a luxury, but the flour-barrel is always 
 full, the pork-barrel not always empty, and 
 there are raisins in the duff on feast-days ; 
 moreover, there are stoves in the white- 
 washed houses (the northern " liveyere's " 
 stove is more often than not a flat rock), 
 beds to sleep in, muslin curtains in the little 
 windows, and a flower, it may be, sprouting 
 desperately in a red pot on the sill. That 
 is the extreme of luxury — rare to be met 
 with ; and it is at all times open to dissolu- 
 tion by famine. 
 
72 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 "Sure, zur, last winter," a stout young 
 fellow boasted, " we had all the grease us 
 wanted ! " 
 
 It is related of a thrifty settler named 
 Olliver, however, who lived with his wife 
 and five children at Big Bight, — he was a 
 man of superior qualities, as the event 
 makes manifest, — that, having come close 
 to the pass of starvation at the end of a 
 long winter, he set out afoot over the hills 
 to seek relief from his nearest neighbour, 
 forty miles away. But there was no relief 
 to be had ; the good neighbour had already 
 given away all that he dared spare, and 
 something more. Twelve miles farther on 
 he was again denied; it is said that the 
 second neighbour mutely pointed to his 
 flour-barrel and his family — which was 
 quite suflicient for Olliver, who thereupon 
 departed to a third house, where his fortune 
 was no better. Perceiving then that he 
 must depend upon the store of food in his 
 own house, which was insufficient to sup- 
 port the lives of all, he returned home, sent 
 
THE LIVEYERE 73 
 
 his wife and eldest son and eldest daughter 
 away on a pretext, despatched his three 
 youngest children with an axe, and shot 
 himself. As he had foreseen, wife, daugh- 
 ter, and son survived until the " break-up " 
 brought food within their reach; and the 
 son was a well-grown boy, and made a 
 capable head of the house thereafter. 
 
 The " liveyere " is a fisherman and trap- 
 per. In the summer he catches cod; in 
 the winter he traps the fox, otter, mink, 
 lynx, and marten, and sometimes he shoots 
 a bear, white or black, and kills a wolf. 
 The "planter," who advances the salt to 
 cure the fish, takes the catch at the end of the 
 season, giving in exchange provisions at an 
 incredible profit ; the Hudson Bay Company 
 takes the fur, giving in exchange provisions 
 at an even larger profit ; for obvious reasons, 
 both aim (there are exceptions, of course) to 
 keep the " liveyere " in debt — which is not 
 by any means a difficult matter, for the 
 "liveyere" is both shiftless and (what is 
 
74 DE. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 more to the point) illiterate. So it comes 
 about that what he may have to eat and 
 wear depends upon the will of the "planter" 
 and of the company ; and when for his ill- 
 luck or his ill-will both cast him off — which 
 sometimes happens — he looks starvation in 
 the very face. A silver fox, of good fur and 
 acceptable colour, is the " liveyere's " great 
 catch; no doubt his most ecstatic night- 
 mare has to do with finding one fast in his 
 trap; but when, "more by chance than 
 good conduct," as they say, he has that 
 heavenly fortune (the event is of the 
 rarest), the company pays sixty or eighty 
 dollars for that which it sells abroad for 
 $600. Of late, however, the free-traders 
 seem to have established a footing on the 
 coast ; their stay may not be long, but for 
 the moment, at any rate, the "'liveyere" 
 may dispose of his fur to greater advantage 
 — if he dare. 
 
 The earth yields the " liveyere " nothing 
 but berries, which are abundant, and, in 
 midsummer, " turnip tops " ; and as numer- 
 
THE LIVEYERE 75 
 
 ous dogs are needed for winter travelling — 
 wolfish creatures, savage, big, famished — 
 no domestic animals can be kept. There 
 was once a man who somehow managed for 
 a season to possess a pig and a sheep ; he 
 marooned his dogs on an island half a mile 
 off the coast; unhappily, however, there 
 blew an off-shore wind in the night, and 
 next morning neither the pig nor the sheep 
 was to be found ; the dogs were engaged in 
 innocent diversions on the island, but there 
 was evidence sufficient on their persons, so 
 to speak, to convict them of the depreda- 
 tion in any court of justice. There are no 
 cows on the coast, no goats, — consequently 
 no additional milk-supply for babies, — who 
 manage from the beginning, however, to 
 thrive on bread and salt beef, if put to the 
 necessity. There are no pigs — there is one 
 pig, I believe, — no sheep, no chickens ; and 
 the first horses to be taken to the sawmill 
 on Hamilton Inlet so frightened the natives 
 that they scampered in every direction for 
 their lives whenever the team came near, 
 
76 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 crying : " Look out ! The harses is comin ' ! " 
 The caribou are too far inland for most of 
 the settlers ; but at various seasons (exclud- 
 ing such times as there is no game at all) 
 there are to be had grouse, partridge, geese, 
 eider-duck, puffin, gulls, loon and petrel, 
 bear, arctic hare, and bay seal, which are 
 shot with marvellously long and old guns — 
 some of them ancient flintlocks. 
 
 ITotwithstanding all, the folk are large 
 and hardy — capable of withstanding cruel 
 hardship and deprivation. 
 
 In summer-time the weather is blistering 
 hot inland ; and on the coast it is more often 
 than not wet, foggy, blustering — bitter 
 enough for the man from the south, who 
 shivers as he goes about. Innumerable ice- 
 bergs drift southward, scraping the coast as 
 they go, and patches of snow lie in the hol- 
 lows of the coast hills — midwa}'' between 
 Battle Harbour and Cape Chidley there is a 
 low headland called Snowy Point because 
 the snow forever lies upon it. But warm, 
 sunny days are to be counted upon in August 
 
THE LIVEYERE TT 
 
 — days when the sea is quiet, the sky deep 
 blue, the rocks bathed in yellow sunlight, 
 the air clear and bracing ; at such times it 
 is good to lie on the high heads and look 
 away out to sea, dreaming the while. In 
 winter, storm and intense cold make most 
 of the coast uninhabitable ; the " liveyeres " 
 retire up the bays and rivers, bag and bag- 
 gage, not only to escape the winds and bit- 
 ter cold, but to be nearer the supply of game 
 and fire-wood. They live in little " tilts " — 
 log huts of one large square room, with 
 " bunks " at each end for the women-folk, 
 and a "cockloft" above for the men and 
 lads. It is very cold; frost forms on the 
 walls, icicles under the " bunks " ; the ther- 
 mometer frequently falls to fifty degrees be- 
 low zero, which, as you may be sure, is ex- 
 ceedingly cold near the sea. ]S"or can a man 
 do much heavy work in the woods, for the 
 perspiration freezes under his clothing. Im- 
 poverished families have no stoves — merely 
 an arrangement of flat stones, with an open- 
 ing in the roof for the escape of the smoke, 
 
78 DE. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 with which they are quite content if only they 
 have enough flour to make hard bread for all. 
 It goes without saying that there is neither 
 butcher, baker, nor candlestick-maker on the 
 coast. Every man is his own bootmaker, 
 tailor, and what not ; there is not a trade or 
 profession practiced anywhere. There is no 
 resident doctor, save the mission doctors, one 
 of whom is established at Battle Harbour, and 
 with a dog-team makes a toilsome journey 
 up the coast in the dead of winter, relieving 
 whom he can. There is no public building, 
 no municipal government, no road. There is 
 no lawyer, no constable ; and I very much 
 doubt that there is a parson regularly sta- 
 tioned among the whites beyond Battle Har- 
 bour, with the exception of the Moravian 
 missionaries. They are scarce enough, at any 
 rate, for the folk in a certain practical way to 
 feel the hardship of their absence. Dr. Gren- 
 f ell tells of landing late one night in a lonely 
 harbour where three "couples wanted marry- 
 ing." They had waited many years for the 
 opportunity. It chanced that the doctor was 
 
THE LIVEYEEE 79 
 
 entertaining a minister on the cruise ; so one 
 couple determined at once to return to the 
 ship with him. "The minister," says the 
 doctor, "decided that pronouncing the banns 
 might be dispensed with in this case. He 
 went ahead with the ceremony, for the 
 couple had three children already ! " 
 
 The "liveyere" is of a sombrely relig- 
 ious turn of mind — his creed as harsh and 
 gloomy as the land he lives in ; he is super- 
 stitious as a savage as well, and an incorri- 
 gible fatalist, all of which is not hard to 
 account for : he is forever in the midst of 
 vast space and silence, face to face with 
 dread and mysterious forces, and in conflict 
 with wind and sea and the changing season, 
 which are irresistible and indifferent. 
 
 Jared was young, lusty, light-hearted; 
 but he lived in the fear and dread of hell. 
 I had known that for two days. 
 
 " The flies, zur," said he to the sportsman, 
 whose hospitality I was enjoying, "was 
 wonderful bad the day." 
 
80 DK. GRENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 We were twelve miles inland, fishing a 
 small stream; and we were now in the 
 " tilt," at the end of the day, safe from the 
 swarming, vicious black-flies. 
 
 "Yes," the sportsman replied, emphatic- 
 ally. " I've suffered the tortures of the 
 damned this day ! " 
 
 Jared burst into a roar of laughter — as 
 sudden and violent as a thunderclap. 
 
 "What you laughing at?" the sports- 
 man demanded, as he tenderly stroked his 
 swollen neck. 
 
 " Tartures o' the damned ! " Jared gasped. 
 " Sure, if thafs all 'tis, I'll jack 'asy about 
 it!" 
 
 He laughed louder — reckless levity; but 
 I knew that deep in his heart he would be 
 infinitely relieved could he believe — could 
 he only make sure — that the punishment of 
 the wicked was no worse than an eternity 
 of fighting with poisonous insects. 
 
 "Ay," he repeated, ruefully, "if that's 
 all 'twas, 'twould not trouble me much." 
 
THE LIVEYERE 81 
 
 The graveyard at Battle Harbour is in a 
 sheltered hollow near the sea. It is a green 
 spot — the one, perhaps, on the island — and 
 they have enclosed it with a high board 
 fence. Men have fished from that harbour 
 for a hundred years and more — but there 
 are not many graves ; why, I do not know. 
 The crumbling stones, the weather-beaten 
 boards, the sprawling ill-worded inscrip- 
 tions, are all, in their way, eloquent : 
 
 "l^ARA It 
 
 ^^MB^ 
 
 DfP]-H£ FOl^rfr 
 
 HACejl fti,f 
 
 V/\R1/ tiOQe^ 
 
 iS9l 
 
 " Sarah Combe died the fourth of August, 1881, aged 
 31 years." 
 
82 DE. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 There is another, better carved, somewhat 
 better spelled, but quite as interesting and 
 luminous : 
 
 In 
 
 Memory of John 
 
 Hill who Died 
 
 December 30 1890 
 
 Aged 34 
 
 Weep not dear Parents 
 For your lost tis my 
 Etamel gain May 
 May Crist you all take up 
 The crost that we 
 Shuld meat again 
 
 These things are, indeed, eloquent — of 
 ignorance, of poverty; but no less elo- 
 quent of sorrow and of love. The Lab- 
 rador "liveyere" is kin with the whole 
 wide world. 
 
YIII 
 IVITH The FLEET 
 
 I'N the early spring — when the sunlight 
 is yellow and the warm winds blow 
 and the melting snow drips over the 
 cliffs and runs in little rivulets from the 
 barren hills — in the thousand harbours of 
 Newfoundland the great fleet is made ready 
 for the long adventure upon the Labrador 
 coast. The rocks echo the noise of hammer 
 and saw and mallet and the song and shout 
 of the workers. The new schooners — build- 
 ing the winter long at the harbour side — 
 are hurried to completion. The old craft — 
 the weather-beaten, ragged old craft, which, 
 it may be, have dodged the reefs and out- 
 lived the gales of forty seasons — are fitted 
 with new spars, patched with new canvas 
 and rope, calked anew, daubed anew and, 
 thus refitted, float brave enough on the 
 
 quiet harbour water. There is no end to 
 83 
 
84 DK. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 the bustle of labour on ships and nets — no 
 end to the clatter of planning. From the 
 skipper of the ten-ton First Venture, who 
 sails with a crew of sons bred for the pur- 
 pose, to the powerful dealer who supplies on 
 shares a fleet of seventeen fore-and-afters 
 manned from the harbours of a great bay, 
 there is hope in the hearts of all. "What- 
 ever the last season, every man is to make 
 a good " voyage " now. This season — this 
 season — there is to be fish a-plenty on the 
 Labrador ! 
 
 The future is bright as the new spring 
 days. Aunt Matilda is to have a bonnet 
 with feathers — when Skipper Thomas gets 
 home from the Labrador. Little Johnny 
 Tatt, he of the crooked back, is to know 
 again the virtue of Pike's Pain Compound, 
 at a dollar a bottle, warranted to cure — 
 when daddy gets home from the Labrador. 
 Skipper BilPs Lizzie, plump, blushing, merry- 
 eyed, is to wed Jack Lute o' Burnt Arm — 
 when Jack comes back from the Labrador. 
 Every man's heart, and, indeed, most men's 
 
WITH THE FLEET 85 
 
 fortunes, are in the venture. The man who 
 has nothing has yet the labour of his hands. 
 Be he skipper, there is one to back his skill 
 and honesty ; be he hand, there is no lack 
 of berths to choose from. Skippers stand 
 upon their record and schooners upon their 
 reputation; it's take your choice, for the 
 hands are not too many : the skippers are 
 timid or bold, as God made them ; the 
 schooners are lucky or not, as Fate deter- 
 mines. Every man has his chance. John 
 Smith o' Twillingate provisions the L\icky 
 Queen and gives her to the penniless Skip- 
 per Jim o' Yellow Tickle on shares. Old 
 Tom Tatter o' Salmon Cove, with plea and 
 argument, persuades the Four Arms trader 
 to trust him once again with the Busy Bee. 
 He'll get the fish this time. Nar a doubt 
 of it ! H^ll be home in August — this year 
 — ^loaded to the gunwale. God knows who 
 pays the cash when the fish fail! God 
 knows how the folk survive the disap- 
 p()intment! It is a greut lottery of hope 
 and fortune. 
 
86 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 When, at last, word comes south that the 
 ice is clearing from the coast, the vessels 
 spread their little wings to the first favour- 
 ing winds; and in a week — ^two weeks or 
 three — the last of the Labradormen have 
 gone " down north." 
 
 Dr. Grenfell and his workers find much 
 to do among these men and women and 
 children. 
 
 At Indian Harbour where the Strathcona 
 lay at anchor, I went aboard the schooner 
 Jolly Crew. It was a raw, foggy day, with 
 a fresh northeast gale blowing, and a high 
 sea running outside the harbour. They 
 were splitting fish on deck; the skiff was 
 just in from the trap—she was still wet 
 with spray. 
 
 " I sails with me sons an' gran'sons, zur," 
 said the skipper, smiling. " Sure, I be a old 
 feller t' be down the Labrador, isn't I, zur ? " 
 
 He did not mean that. He was proud of 
 his age and strength — glad that he was still 
 able"t'beatthefishin'." 
 
WITH THE FLEET 87 
 
 "'Tis a wonder you've lived through it 
 all," said I. 
 
 He laughed. " An' why, zur ? " he asked. 
 
 " Many's the ship wrecked on this coast," 
 I answered. 
 
 "Oh no, zur," said he; "not so many, 
 zur, as you might think. Down this way, 
 zur, we Jcnows how f sail ! " 
 
 That was a succinct explanation of very 
 much that had puzzled me. 
 
 " Ah, well," said I, " 'tis a hard life." 
 
 " Hard ? " he asked, doubtfully. 
 
 "Yes," I answered; "'tis a hard life — 
 the fishin'." 
 
 "Oh no, zur," said he, quietly, looking 
 up from his work. " 'Tis just — ^just life ! " 
 
 They do, indeed, know how "f sail." 
 The Newfoundland government, niggardly 
 and utterly independable when the good of 
 the fisherf oik is concerned, of whatever com- 
 plexion the government may chance to be, 
 but prodigal to an extraordinary degree 
 when individual self-interests are at stake — 
 
88 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 this is a delicate way of putting an unpleas- 
 ant truth, — keeps no light burning beyond 
 the Strait of Belle Isle ; the best it does, I 
 believe, is to give wrecked seamen free pas- 
 sage home. Under these difficult circum- 
 stances, no seamen save E'ewfoundlanders, 
 who are the most skillful and courageous of 
 all, could sail that coast : and they only be- 
 cause they are born to follow the sea — there 
 is no escape for them — and are bred to sail- 
 ing from their earliest years. 
 
 " What you going to be when you grow 
 up ? " I once asked a lad on the far north- 
 east coast. 
 
 He looked at me in vast astonishment. 
 
 " What you going to he, what you going 
 to do,^^ I repeated, " when you grow up ? " 
 
 Still he did not comprehend. " Eh ? " he 
 said. 
 
 " What you going to work at," said I, in 
 desperation, " when you're a man ? " 
 
 " Oh, zur," he answered, understanding at 
 last, " I isn't clever enough t' be a parson ! " 
 
 And so it went without saying that he 
 
WITH THE FLEET 89 
 
 was to fish for a living ! It is no wonder, 
 then, that the skippers of the fleet know 
 " how t' sail." The remarkable quality of 
 the sea-captains who come from among them 
 impressivel}^ attests the fact — not only their 
 quality as sailors, but as men of spirit and 
 proud courage. There is one — now a cap- 
 tain of a coastal boat on the Newfoundland 
 shore — who takes his steamer into a ticklish 
 harbour of a thick, dark night, when every- 
 thing is black ahead and roundabout, steer- 
 ing only by the echo of the ship's whistle ! 
 There is another, a confident seaman, a 
 bluff, high-spirited fellow, who was once de- 
 layed by bitter winter weather — an inky 
 night, with ice about, the snow flying, the 
 seas heavy with frost, the wind bio wing a gale. 
 
 " Where have you been ? " they asked him, 
 sarcastically, from the head office. 
 
 The captain had been on the bridge all 
 night. 
 
 " Berry-picking," was his laconic despatch 
 in reply. 
 
 There is another — also the captain of a 
 
90 DR. GEENFELL^S PAEISH 
 
 coastal steamer — who thought it wise to lie 
 in harbour through a stormy night in the 
 early winter. 
 
 "What detains you?" came a message 
 from the head office. 
 
 " It is not a fit night for a vessel to be at 
 sea," the captain replied ; and thereupon he 
 turned in, believing the matter to be at an end. 
 
 The captain had been concerned for his 
 vessel — not for his life ; nor yet for his com- 
 fort. But the underling at the head office 
 misinterpreted the message. 
 
 "What do we pay you for?" he tele- 
 graphed. 
 
 So the captain took the ship out to sea. 
 Men say that she went out of commission 
 the next day, and that it cost the company 
 a thousand dollars to refit her. 
 
 " A dunderhead," say the folk, " can cotch 
 fish ; but it takes a man t' find un." It is a 
 chase ; and, as the coast proverb has it, " the 
 fish have no bells." It is estimated that 
 there are 7,000 square miles of fishing-banks 
 
WITH THE FLEET 91 
 
 off the Labrador coast. There will be fish 
 somewhere — not everywhere; not every man 
 will " use his salt " (the schooners go north 
 loaded with salt for curing) or "get his load." 
 In the beginning — this is when the ice first 
 clears away — there is a race for berths. It 
 takes clever, reckless sailing and alert action 
 to secure the best. I am reminded of a 
 skipper who by hard driving to windward 
 and good luck came first of all to a favoura- 
 ble harbour. It was then night, and his 
 crew was weary, so he put off running out 
 his trap-leader until morning ; but in the 
 night the wind changed, and when he awoke 
 at dawn there were two other schooners 
 lying quietly at anchor near by and the 
 berths had been " staked." When the traps 
 are down, there follows a period of anxious 
 waiting. Where are the fish ? There are 
 no telegraph-lines on that coast. The news 
 must be spread by word of mouth. When, 
 at last, it comes, there is a sudden change 
 of plan — a wild rush to the more favoured 
 grounds. 
 
92 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 It is in this scramble that many a skipper 
 makes his great mistake. I was talking 
 with a disconsolate young fellow in a north- 
 ern harbour where the fish were running 
 thick. The schooners were fast loading ; 
 but he had no berth, and was doing but 
 poorly with the passing days. 
 
 " If I hadn't — if I only hadn't — took up 
 me trap when I did," said he, "I'd been 
 loaded an' off home. Sure, zur, would you 
 believe it ? but I had the berth off the point. 
 Off the point — the berth off the point ! " he 
 repeated, earnestly, his eyes wide. "An', 
 look ! I hears they's a great run o' fish t' 
 Cutthroat Tickle. So I up with me trap, for 
 I'd been gettin' nothin' ; an' — an' — would you 
 believe it ? but the man that put his down 
 where I took mine up took a hundred 
 quintal^ out o' that berth next marnin'! 
 An' he'll load," he groaned, "afore the 
 week's out ! " 
 
 ' A quintal is, roughly, a hundred pounds. One hun- 
 dred quintals of green fish are equal, roughly, to thirty 
 of dry, which, at $3, would amount to |90. 
 
WITH THE FLEET 93 
 
 When the fish are running, the work is 
 mercilessly hard ; it is kept up night and 
 day; there is no sleep for man or child, 
 save, it may be, an hour's slumber where 
 they toil, just before dawn. The schooner 
 lies at anchor in the harbour, safe enough 
 from wind and sea ; the rocks, surrounding 
 the basin in which she lies, keep the har- 
 bour water placid forever. But the men set 
 the traps in the open sea, somewhere off the 
 heads, or near one of the outlying islands ; 
 it may be miles from the anchorage of the 
 schooner. They put out at dawn — before 
 dawn, rather ; for they aim to be at the trap 
 just when the light is strong enough for the 
 hauling. When the skiff is loaded, they put 
 back to harbour in haste, throw the fish on 
 deck, split them, salt them, lay them neatly 
 in the hold, and put out to the trap again. 
 I have seen the harbours — then crowded 
 with fishing-craft — fairly ablaze with light 
 at midnight. Torches were flaring on the 
 decks and in the turf hut on the rocks 
 ashore. The night was quiet; there was 
 
94 DE. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 not a sound from the tired workers ; but the 
 flaring lights made known that the wild, 
 bleak, far-away place — a basin in the midst 
 of barren, uninhabited hills — was still astir 
 with the day's work. 
 
 At such times, the toil at the oars, and at 
 the splitting-table,^ whether on deck or in 
 the stages — and the lack of sleep, and the 
 icy winds and cold salt spray — is all bitter 
 cruel to suffer. The Labrador fisherman 
 will not readily admit that he lives a hard 
 life ; but if you suggest that when the fish 
 are running it may be somewhat more toil- 
 some than lives lived elsewhere, he will 
 grant you something. 
 
 " Oh, ay," he'll drawl, " when the fish is 
 runnin'. His a bit hard." 
 
 I learned from a child — he was merry, 
 brave, fond of the adventure— that fishing 
 is a pleasant business in the sunny midsum- 
 mer months ; but that when, late in the fall, 
 the skiff puts out to the trap at dawn, it is 
 
 1 A "clever hand" can split— tliat is, clean— thirty 
 fish in a minute. 
 
WITH THE FLEET 95 
 
 wise to plunge one's hands deep in the 
 water before taking the oars, no matter 
 how much it hurts, for one's wrists are then 
 covered with salt-water sores and one's 
 palms are cracked, even though one take 
 the precaution of wearing a brass chain — 
 that, oh, yes ! it is wise to plunge one's 
 hands in the cold water, as quick as may 
 be ; for thus one may " limber 'em up " be- 
 fore the trap is reached. 
 
 "'Tis not hard, now," said he. "But, 
 oh — 00 — 00 ! when the big nor'easters blow! 
 Oo — 00 ! " he repeated, with a shrug and a 
 sage shake of the head; "'tis won-der-ful 
 hard those times ! " 
 
 The return is small. The crews are com- 
 prised of from ^Ye to ten men, with, occa- 
 sionally, a sturdy maid for cook, to whom 
 is given thirty dollars for her season's work ; 
 some old hands will sail on no ship with a 
 male cook, for, as one of them said, " Sure, 
 some o' thim min can't boil water without 
 burnin' it ! " A good season's catch is one 
 hundred quintals of dry fish a man. A 
 
96 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 simple calculation— with some knowledge 
 of certain factors which I need not state — 
 makes it plain that a man must himself 
 catch, as his share of the trap, 30,000 fish if 
 he is to net a living wage. If his return is 
 $250 he is in the happiest fortune — richly 
 rewarded, beyond his dreams, for his sum- 
 mer's work. One-half of that is sufficient 
 to give any modest man a warm glow of 
 content and pride. Often — it depends 
 largely upon chance and the skill of his 
 skipper — the catch is so poor that he must 
 make the best of twenty-five or thirty 
 dollars. It must not be supposed that the 
 return is always in cash; it is usually in 
 trade, which is quite a different thing — in 
 Newfoundland. 
 
 The schooners take many passengers 
 north in the spring. Such are called 
 "freighters" on the coast; they are put 
 ashore at such harbours as they elect, and, 
 for passage for themselves, families, and 
 
WITH THE FLEET 97 
 
 gear, pay upon the return voyage twenty- 
 five cents for every hundredweight of fish 
 caught. As a matter of course, the vessels 
 are preposterously overcrowded. Dr. Gren- 
 fell tells of counting thirty-four men and 
 sixteen women (no mention was made of 
 children) aboard a nineteen-ton schooner, 
 then on the long, rough voyage to the north. 
 The men fish from the coast in small boats 
 just as the more prosperous "green-fish 
 catchers" put out from the schooners. 
 Meantime, they live in mud huts, which 
 are inviting or otherwise, as the women- 
 folk go; some are damp, cave-like, ill- 
 savoured, crowded; others are airy, cozy, 
 the floors spread deep with powdered shell, 
 the whole immaculately kept. When the 
 party is landed, the women sweep out the 
 last of the winter's snow, the men build 
 great fires on the floors; indeed, the huts 
 are soon ready for occupancy. At best, 
 they are tiny places — much like children's 
 playhouses. There was once a tall man 
 
98 DR. GRENFELKS PARISH 
 
 who did not quite fit the sleeping place as- 
 signed to him ; but with great good nature 
 he cut a hole in the wall, built a miniature 
 addition for his feet, and slept the summer 
 through at comfortable full length. It is a 
 great outing for the children; they romp 
 on the rocks, toddle over the nearer hills, 
 sleep in the sunshine ; but if they are eight 
 years old, as one said — or well grown at 
 five or seven — they must do their little 
 share of work. 
 
 "Withal, the Labradormen are of a simple, 
 God-fearing, clean-lived, hardy race of men. 
 There was once a woman who made boast 
 of her high connection in England, as 
 women will the wide world over ; and when 
 she was questioned concerning the position 
 the boasted relative occupied, replied, " Oh, 
 he's Superintendent o' Foreign Govern- 
 ments ! " There was an austere old Chris- 
 tian who on a Sunday morning left his trap 
 — ^his whole fortune — lie in the path of a 
 
WITH THE FLEET 99 
 
 destroying iceberg rather than desecrate 
 the Lord's day by taking it out of the 
 water. Both political parties in New- 
 foundland shamelessly deceive the credu- 
 lous fisherfolk; there was a childlike old 
 fellow who, when asked, "And what will 
 you do if there is no fish?" confidently 
 answered: "Oh, they's goin* t' be a new 
 Gov'ment. He'll take care o' we ! " There 
 was a sturdy son of the coast who deserted 
 his schooner at sea and swam ashore. But 
 he had mistaken a barren island for the main- 
 land, which was yet far off ; and there he 
 lived, without food, for twenty-seven days ! 
 When he was picked up, his condition was 
 such as may not be described (the Labrador 
 fly is a vicious insect) ; he was unconscious, 
 but he survived to fish many another 
 season. 
 
 The mail-boat picked up Skipper Thomas 
 of Carbonear — then master of a loaded 
 schooner — at a small harbour near the 
 
 a.c>fC. 
 
100 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 Straits. His crew carried him aboard; 
 for he was desperately ill, and wanted to 
 die at home, where his children were. 
 
 "He's wonderful bad," said one of the 
 men. " He've consumption." 
 
 " I'm just wantin' t' die at home," he said, 
 again and again. "Just that — just where 
 my children be ! " 
 
 All hearts were with him in that last 
 struggle — but no man dared hope ; for the 
 old skipper had already beaten off death 
 longer than death is wont to wait, and his 
 strength was near spent. 
 
 " Were you sick when you sailed for the 
 Labrador in the spring ? " they asked him. 
 
 " Oh, ay," said he ; "I were terrible bad 
 then." 
 
 " Then why," they said — " why did you 
 come at all ? " 
 
 They say he looked up in mild surprise. 
 "I had t' make me livin'," he answered, 
 simply. 
 
 His coffin was knocked together on the 
 
WITH THE FLEET 101 
 
 forward deck next moruing — with Carbo- 
 near a day's sail beyond. 
 
 The fleet goes home in the early fall. 
 The schooners are loaded — some so low with 
 the catch that the water washes into the 
 scuppers. " You could wash your hands on 
 her deck," is the skipper's proudest boast. 
 The feat of seamanship, I do not doubt, is 
 not elsewhere equalled. It is an inspiring 
 sight to see the doughty little craft beating 
 into the wind on a gray day. The harvest- 
 ing of a field of grain is good to look upon ; 
 but I think that there can be no more stir- 
 ring sight in all the world, no sight more 
 quickly to melt a man's heart, more deeply 
 to move him to love men and bless God, 
 than the sight of the Labrador fleet beating 
 home loaded — toil done, dangers past ; the 
 home port at the end of a run with a fair 
 wind. The home-coming, I fancy, is much 
 like the return of the viking ships to the old 
 Norwegian harbours must have been. The 
 lucky skippers strut the village roads with 
 
102 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 swelling chests, heroes in the sight of all ; 
 the old men, long past their labour, listen to 
 new tales and spin old yarns ; the maids and 
 the lads renew their interrupted love-mak- 
 ings. There is great rejoicing — feasting, 
 merrymaking, hearty thanksgiving. 
 Thanks be to God, the fleet's home ! 
 
IX 
 
 On The FRENCH SHORE 
 
 DOCTOE GEEISTFELL appears to 
 have a peculiar affection for the 
 outporters of what is locally known 
 as the "French Shore" — that stretch of 
 coast lying between Cape John and the 
 northernmost point of Newfoundland : it is 
 one section of the shore upon which the 
 French have fishing rights. This is the real 
 Newfoundland; to the writer there is no 
 Newfoundland apart from that long strip of 
 rock against which the sea forever breaks : 
 none that is not of punt, of wave, of fish, 
 of low sky and of a stalwart, briny folk. 
 Indeed, though he has joyously lived weeks 
 of blue weather in the outports, with the 
 sea all a-ripple and flashing and the breeze 
 blowing warm, in retrospect land and peo- 
 ple resolve themselves into a rocky harbour 
 and a sturdy little lad with a question — the 
 harbour, gray and dripping wet, a cluster of 
 whitewashed cottages perched on the rocks, 
 103 
 
104 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 towards which a tiny, red-sailed punt is 
 beating from the frothy open, with the white 
 of breakers on either hand, while a raw 
 wind lifts the fog from the black inland 
 hills, upon which ragged patches of snow 
 lie melting ; the lad, stout, frank-eyed, tow- 
 headed, browned by the wind, bending over 
 the splitting-table with a knife in his toil- 
 worn young hand and the blood of cod 
 dripping from his fingers, and looking wist- 
 fully up, at last, to ask a question or two 
 concerning certain old, disquieting mysteries. 
 " Where do the tide go, zur, when 'e runs 
 out ? " he plainted. " Where do 'e go, zur ? 
 Sure, zur, you is able t' tell me that, isn't 
 you?" 
 
 So, in such a land — where, on some bleak 
 stretches of coast, the potatoes are grown in 
 imported English soil, where most gardens, 
 and some graveyards, are made of earth 
 scraped from the hollows of the hills, where 
 four hundred and nineteen bushels of lean 
 wheat are grown in a single year, and the 
 
ON THE FKENCH SHORE 105 
 
 production of beef -cattle is insignificant as 
 compared with the production of babies — in 
 such a land there is nothing for the young 
 man to do but choose his rock, build his lit- 
 tle cottage and his flake and his stage, 
 marry a maid of the harbour when the spring 
 winds stir his blood, gather his potato patch, 
 get a pig and a goat, and go fishing in his 
 punt. And they do fish, have always fished 
 since many generations ago the island was 
 first settled by adventurous Devon men, and 
 must continue to fish to the end of time. 
 Out of a total male population of one hun- 
 dred thousand, which includes the city-folk 
 of St. Johns and an amazing proportion of 
 babies and tender lads, about fifty-five thou- 
 sand men and grown boys catch fish for a 
 living. 
 
 "Still an' all, they's no country in the 
 world like this!" said the old skipper. 
 " Sure, a man's set up in life when he haves 
 a pig an' a punt an' a potato patch." 
 
 " But have you ever seen another ? " I 
 asked. 
 
106 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 " I've been so far as Saint Johns, zur, an' 
 once t' the waterside o' Boston," was the 
 surprising reply, " an' I'm thinkin' I knows 
 what the world's like." 
 
 So it is with most ^Newfoundlanders : they 
 love their land with an intolerant preju- 
 dice ; and most are content with the life they 
 lead. " The ISTewfoundlander comes back," 
 is a significant proverb of the outports ; and, 
 " White Bay's good enough for me," said a 
 fishwife to me once, when I asked her why 
 she still remained in a place so bleak and 
 barren, " for I've heered tell 'tis wonderful 
 smoky an' n'isy 't Saint Johns." The life 
 they live, and strangely love, is exceeding 
 toilsome. Toil began for a gray-haired, 
 bony-handed old woman whom I know when 
 she was so young that she had to stand on 
 a tub to reach the splitting-table ; when, too, 
 to keep her awake and busy, late o' nights, 
 her father would make believe to throw a 
 bloody cod's head at her. It began for that 
 woman's son when, at ^Ye or six years old, 
 he was just able to spread the fish to dry on 
 
ON THE FRENCH SHORE lOY 
 
 the flake, and continued in earnest, a year 
 or two later, when first he was strong 
 enough to keep the head of his father's punt 
 up to the wind. But they seem not to know 
 that fishing is a hard or dangerous employ- 
 ment: for instance, a mild-eyed, crooked 
 old fellow — he was a cheerful Methodist, 
 too, and subject to " glory-fits " — who had 
 fished from one harbour for sixty years, com- 
 puted for me that he had put out to sea in 
 his punt at least twenty thousand times, that 
 he had been frozen to the seat of his punt 
 many times, that he had been swept to sea 
 with the ice-packs, six times, that he had 
 weathered six hundred gales, great and 
 small, and that he had been wrecked more 
 times than he could " just mind " at the mo- 
 ment ; yet he was the only old man ever I 
 met who seemed honestly to wish that he 
 might live his life over again ! 
 
 The hook-and-line man has a lonely time 
 of it. From earliest dawn, while the night 
 yet lies thick on the sea, until in storm or 
 calm or favouring breeze he makes harbour 
 
108 DK. GEENFELL'S PAKISH 
 
 in the dusk, he lies off shore, fishing — toss- 
 ing in the lop of the grounds, with the 
 waves to balk and the wind to watch warily, 
 while he tends his lines. There is no jolly 
 companionship of the forecastle and turf hut 
 for him — no new scene, no hilarious adven- 
 ture ; nor has he the expectation of a proud re- 
 turn to lighten his toil. In the little punt 
 he has made with his own hands he is for- 
 ever riding an infinite expanse, which, in 
 " fish weather," is melancholy, or threaten- 
 ing, or deeply solemn, as it may chance — all 
 the while and all alone confronting the 
 mystery and terrible immensity of the sea. 
 It may be that he gives himself over to aim- 
 less musing, or, even less happily, to ponder- 
 ing certain dark mysteries of the soul ; and 
 so it comes about that the " mad-house 't 
 Saint Johns" is inadequate to accommo- 
 date the poor fellows whom lonely toil has 
 bereft of their senses — melancholiacs, idiots 
 and maniacs " along o' religion." 
 
 Notwithstanding all, optimism persists 
 everywhere on the coast. One old fisher- 
 
ON THE FRENCH SHORE 109 
 
 man counted himself favoured above most 
 men because he had for years been able to 
 afford the luxury of cream of tartar; and 
 another, a brawny giant, confessed to hav- 
 ing a disposition so pertinaciously happy 
 that he had come to regard a merry heart as 
 his besetting sin. Sometimes an off-shore 
 gale puts an end to all the fishing ; some- 
 times it is a sudden gust, sometimes a big 
 wave, sometimes a confusing mist, more 
 often long exposure to spray and shipped 
 water and soggy winds. It was a sleety 
 off-shore gale, coming at the end of a sunny, 
 windless day, that froze or drowned thirty 
 men off Trinity Bay in a single night ; and 
 it was a mere puff on a " civil " evening — 
 but a swift, wicked little puff, sweeping 
 round Breakheart Head — that made a 
 widow of Elizabeth Eideout o' Duck Cove 
 and took her young son away. Often, how- 
 ever, the hook-and-line man fishes his eighty 
 years of life, and dies in his bed as cheer- 
 fully as he has lived and as poor as he was 
 born. 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 
 
 IT had been a race against the peril of 
 fog and the discomfort of a wet night 
 all the way from Hooping Harbour. 
 "We escaped the scowl of the northeast, the 
 gray, bitter wind and the sea it was fast 
 fretting to a fury, when the boat rounded 
 Canada Head and ran into the shelter of the 
 bluffs at Englee — into the damp shadows 
 sombrely gathered there. When the punt 
 was moored to the stage-head, the fog had 
 thickened the dusk into deep night, and the 
 rain had soaked us to the skin. There was 
 a light, a warm, yellow light, shining from 
 a window, up along shore and to the west. 
 We stumbled over an erratic footpath, which 
 the folk of the place call " the roaad " — feel- 
 ing for direction, chancing the steps, splash- 
 ing through pools of water, tripping over 
 sharp rocks. The whitewashed cottages of 
 
 the village, set on the hills, were like the 
 110 
 
THE WHITEWASHED COTTAGES ON THE HILLS" 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 111 
 
 ghosts of houses. They started into sight, 
 hung suspended in the night, vanished as we 
 trudged on. The folk were all abed — all 
 save Elisha Duckworthy, that pious giant, 
 who had been late beating in from the fish- 
 ing grounds off the Head. It was Elisha 
 who opened the door to our knock, and sent 
 a growling, bristling dog back to his place 
 with a gentle word. 
 
 "Will you not " 
 
 " Sure, sir," said Elisha, a smile spreading 
 from his eyes to the very tip of his great 
 beard, " 'twould be a hard man an' a bad 
 Christian that would turn strangers away. 
 Come in, sir ! 'Tis a full belly you'll have 
 when you leaves the table, an' 'tis a warm 
 bed you'll sleep in, this night." 
 
 After family prayers, in which we, the 
 strangers he had taken in, were commended 
 to the care and mercy of God in such simple, 
 feeling phrases as proved the fine quality of 
 this man's hospitality and touched our hearts 
 in their innermost parts, Elisha invited us to 
 sit by the kitchen fire with him "for a 
 
112 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 spell." While the dogs snored in chorus 
 with a young kid and a pig by the roaring 
 stove, and the chickens rustled and clucked 
 in their coop under the bare spruce sofa 
 which Elisha had made, and the wind flung 
 the rain against the window-panes, we three 
 talked of weather and fish and toil and peril 
 and death. It may be that a cruel coast 
 and a sea quick to wrath engender a certain 
 dread curiosity concerning the " taking off " 
 in a man who fights day by day to survive 
 the enmity of both. Elisha talked for a 
 long time of death and heaven and hell. 
 Then, solemnly, his voice fallen to a whisper, 
 he told of his father, Skipper George, a man 
 of weakling faith, who had been reduced to 
 idiocy by wondering what came after death 
 — by wondering, wondering, wondering, in 
 sunlight and mist and night, off shore in the 
 punt, labouring at the splitting-table, at work 
 on the flake, everywhere, wondering all the 
 time where souls took their flight. 
 
 " 'Twere wonderin' whether hell do be 
 underground or not," said Elisha, "that 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 113 
 
 turned un over at last. Sure, sir," with a 
 sigh, " 'twere doubt, you sees. 'Tis faith us 
 must have." 
 
 Elisha stroked the nearest dog with a gen- 
 tle hand — a mighty hand, toil-worn and mis- 
 shapen, like the man himself. 
 
 "Do your besettin' sin get the best o' 
 you, sir ? " he said, looking up. It may be 
 that he craved to hear a confession of fail- 
 ure that he might afterwards sustain him- 
 self with the thought that no man is invul- 
 nerable. "Sure, we've all besettin' sins. 
 When we do be snatched from the burnin' 
 brands, b'y, a little spark burns on, an' on, 
 an' on; an' he do be wonderful hard t' 
 douse out. 'Tis like the eye us must pluck 
 out by command o' the Lard. With some 
 men 'tis a taste for baccy. With some 'tis 
 a scarcity o' salt in the fish. With some 
 'tis too much water in the lobster cans. 
 With some 'tis a cravin' for sweetness. 
 With me 'tis worse nor all. Sure, sir," he 
 went on, " I've knowed some men so fond, 
 so wonderful fond, o' baccy that um smoked 
 
114 DK. GKENFELL^S PARISH 
 
 the shoes off their children's feet. 'Tis 
 their besettin' sin, sir — 'tis their besettin' 
 sin. But 'tis not baccy that worries me. 
 The taste fell away when I were took from 
 sin. 'Tis not that. 'Tis worse. Sure, with 
 me, sir," he said, brushing his hand over 
 his forehead in a weary, despairing way, 
 "'tis laughin'. 'Tis the sin of jokin' that 
 puts my soul in danger o' bein' hove over- 
 board into the burnin' lake. I were a won- 
 derful joker when I were a sinful man. 
 'Twas all I lived for — not t' praise God an' 
 prepare my soul for death. When I gets 
 up in the marnin', now, sir, I feels like 
 jokin' like what I used t' do, particular if it 
 do be a fine day. Ah, sir," with a long 
 sigh, " 'tis a great temptation, I tells you — 
 'tis a wonderful temptation. But 'tis not 
 set down in the Book that Jesus Christ 
 smiled an' laughed, an' with the Lard's help 
 I'll beat the devil yet. I'll beat un," he 
 cried, as if inspired to some supreme strug- 
 gle. " I'll beat un," he repeated, clinching 
 his great hands. " I will ! " 
 
SOME OUTPOET FOLK 115 
 
 Elisha bade us good-night with a solemn 
 face. A little smile — a poor, frightened 
 little smile of tender feeling for us — flick- 
 ered in his eyes for the space of a breath. 
 But he snuffed it out relentlessly, expressed 
 his triumph with a flash of his eye, and 
 went away to bed. In the morning, when 
 the sun called us up, he had come back 
 from the early morning's fishing, and was 
 singing a most doleful hymn of death and 
 judgment over the splitting-table in the 
 stage. The sunlight was streaming into 
 the room, and the motes were all dancing 
 merrily in the beam. The breeze was rust- 
 ling the leaves of a sickly bush under the 
 window — coaxing them to hopeful whis- 
 perings. I fancied that the sea was all blue 
 and rippling, and that the birds were flitting 
 through the sunlight, chirping their sym- 
 pathy with the smiling day. But Elisha, 
 his brave heart steeled against the whole 
 earth's frivolous mood, continued heroically 
 to pour forth his dismal song. 
 
116 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 Twilight was filling the kitchen with 
 strange shadows. We had disposed of 
 Aunt Ruth's watered fish and soaked hard- 
 bread with hunger for a relish. Uncle 
 Simon's glance was mournfully intent upon 
 the bare platter. 
 
 "But," said Aunt Ruth, with obstinate 
 emphasis, " I knows they be. 'Tis not what 
 we hears we believe, sir. No, 'tis not what 
 we hears. 'Tis what we sees. An' I've 
 seed un." 
 
 " 'Tis true, sir," said Uncle Simon, look- 
 ing up. " They be nar a doubt about it." 
 
 "But where," said I, "did she get her 
 looking-glass ? " 
 
 " They be many a trader wrecked on this 
 coast, sir," said Uncle Simon. 
 
 "'Twere not a mermaid I seed," said 
 Aunt Ruth. " 'Twere a merm^^." 
 
 "Sure," said Uncle Simon, mysteriously, 
 "they do be in the sea the shape o' all 
 that's on the land — shape for shape, sir. 
 They be sea-horses an' sea-cows an' sea-dogs. 
 "Why not the shape o' humans ? " 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK IIY 
 
 " "Well," said Aunt Euth, " 'twas when I 
 were a little maid. An' 'twas in a gale o' 
 wind. I goes down t' Billy Cove t' watch 
 me father bring the punt in, an' I couldn't 
 see un anywhere. So I thought he were 
 drownded. 'Twere handy t' dark when I 
 seed the merman rise from the water. He 
 were big an' black— so black as the stove. 
 I could see the eyes of un so plain as I can 
 see yours. He were not good lookin' — no, 
 I'll say that much — he were not good 
 lookin'. He waved his arms, an' beckoned 
 an' beckoned an' beckoned. But, sure, sir, 
 I wouldn't go, for I were feared. "Tis 
 the soul o' me father,' thinks I. *Sure, 
 the sea's cotched un.' So I runs home an' 
 tells me mother; an' she says 'twere a 
 merman. I hnows they be mermans an' 
 mermaids, 'cause I'se seed un. 'Tis what 
 we sees we believes." 
 
 "'Tis said," said Uncle Simon, "that if 
 you finds un on the rocks an' puts un in the 
 water they gives you three wishes ; an' all 
 you has t' do is wish, an' " 
 
118 DE. GEENFELL^S PARISH 
 
 " 'Tis said," said Aunt Ruth, with a pro- 
 digious frown across the table, "that the 
 mermaids trick the fishermen t' the edge o' 
 the sea an' steals un away. Uncle Simon 
 Ride," she went on, severely, "if ever 
 you " 
 
 Uncle Simon looked sheepish. "Sure, 
 woman," said he, the evidences of guilt 
 plain on his face, " they be no danger t' me. 
 'Twould take a clever mermaid t' " 
 
 "Uncle Simon Ride," said Aunt Ruth, 
 " nar another word. An' if you don't put 
 my spinnin! wheel t' rights this night I'll 
 give you your tea in a mug ^ t'-morrow — an' 
 mind that, sir, mind that ! " 
 
 After we had left the table Uncle Simon 
 took me aside. "She do be a wonderful 
 woman," said he, meaning Aunt Ruth. 
 Then, earnestly, " She've no cause t' be jeal- 
 ous o' the mermaids. No, sir — sure, no." 
 
 It is difficult to convey an adequate con- 
 ception of the barrenness of this coast. If 
 ^ A scolding. 
 
SOME OUTPOET FOLK 119 
 
 you were to ask a fisherman of some remote 
 outport what his flour was made of he would 
 stare at you and be mute. " Wheat " would 
 be a new, meaningless word to many a man 
 of those places. It may be that the words 
 of the Old Skipper of Black Harbour will 
 help the reader to an understanding of the 
 high value set upon the soil and all it pro- 
 duces. 
 
 " Come with me," said the Old Skipper, 
 " an' I'll show you so fine a garden as ever 
 you seed." 
 
 The garden was on an island two miles 
 off the mainland. Like many another patch 
 of ground it had to be cultivated from a 
 distant place. It was an acre, or there- 
 abouts, which had been "won from the 
 wilderness " by the labour of several gener- 
 ations ; and it was owned by eleven fam- 
 ilies. This was not a garden made by gath- 
 ering soil and dumping it in a hollow, as 
 most gardens are ; it was a real " meadow." 
 
 "Look at them potatoes, sir," said the 
 skipper. He radiated pride in the soil's 
 
120 DE. GEENFELUS PAEISH 
 
 achievement as he waited for my outburst 
 of congratulation. 
 
 The potatoes, owing to painstaking fer- 
 tilization with small fish, had attained ad- 
 mirable size — in tops. But the hay ! 
 
 " 'Tis fine grass," said the skipper. '" Fine 
 as ever you seed ! " 
 
 It was thin, and nearer gray than yellow ; 
 and every stalk was weak in the knees. I 
 do it more than justice when I write that it 
 rose above my shoe tops. 
 
 "'Tis sizable hay," said the skipper. 
 "'Tis time I had uncut." 
 
 On the way back the skipper caught sight 
 of a skiff-load of hay, which old John Burns 
 was sculling from Duck Island. He was 
 careful to point it out as good evidence of 
 the fertility of that part of the world. By 
 and by we came to a whisp of hay which 
 had fallen from the skiff. It was a mere 
 handful floating on the quiet water. 
 
 " The wastefulness of that dunderhead ! " 
 exclaimed the skipper. 
 
SOME OUTPOET FOLK 121 
 
 He took the boat towards the whisp of 
 hay, puffing his wrath all the while. 
 
 " Pass the gaff, b'y," he said. 
 
 With the utmost care he hooked the whisp 
 of hay — to the last straw — and drew it over 
 the side. 
 
 " 'Tis a sin," said he, " t' waste good hay 
 like that." 
 
 Broad fields, hay and wheat and corn, all 
 yellow, waving to the breeze — the sun flood- 
 ing all — were far, far beyond this man's im- 
 agination. He did not know that in other 
 lands the earth yields generously to the 
 men who sow seed. How little did the 
 harvest mean to him ! The world is a world 
 of rock and sea — of sea and naked rock. 
 Soil is gathered in buckets. Gardens are 
 made by hand. The return is precious in 
 the sight of men. 
 
 Uncle Zeb Gale — Daddy Gale, who had 
 long ago lost count of his grandchildren, 
 they were so many — OP Zeb tottered up 
 
122 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 from the sea, gasping and coughing, but 
 broadly smiling in the intervals. He had 
 a great cod in one hand, and his old cloth 
 cap was in the other. His head was bald, 
 and his snowy beard covered his chest. 
 Toil and the weight of years had bowed 
 his back, spun a film over his eyes and 
 cracked his voice. But neither toil nor 
 age nor hunger nor cold had broken his 
 cheery interest in all the things of life, 
 or Zeb smiled in a sweetly winning way. 
 He stopped to pass a word with the 
 stranger, who was far away from home, 
 and therefore, no doubt, needed a hearten- 
 ing word or two. 
 
 " Fine even, zur," said he. 
 
 "'Tis that, Uncle Zeb. How have the 
 fish been to-day ? " 
 
 "Oh, they be a scattered fish off the 
 Mull, zur. But 'tis only a scattered one. 
 They don't run in, zur, like what they 
 used to when I were young, sure." 
 
 " How many years ago, sir ? " 
 
 " 'Tis many year, zur," said Uncle Zeb, 
 
SOME OUTPOET FOLK 123 
 
 smiling indulgence with my youth. " They 
 was fish a-plenty when — when — when I 
 were young. 'Tis not what it used t' be 
 — no, no, zur ; not at all. Sure, zur, I been 
 goin' t' the grounds off the Mull since I 
 were seven years old. Since I were seven ! 
 I be eighty-three now, zur. Seventy-six 
 year, zur, I has fished out o' this here 
 harbour." 
 
 Uncle Zeb stopped to wheeze a bit. He 
 was out of breath with this long speech. 
 And when he had wheezed a bit, a spasm 
 of hard coughing took him. He was on 
 the verge of the last stage of consump- 
 tion, was Uncle Zeb. 
 
 " 'Tis a fine harbour t' fish from, zur," he 
 gasped. "They be none better. Least- 
 ways, so they tells me — them that's cruised 
 about a deal. Sure, I've never seen another. 
 'Tis t' Conch ^ I've wanted t' go since I were 
 a young feller. I'll see un yet, zur — sure, 
 an' I will." 
 
 " You are eighty-three ? " said L 
 
 ^ Some miles distant. 
 
124: DR. GEENFELKS PARISH 
 
 " I be the oldest man t' the harbour, zur 
 I marries the maids an' the young fellers 
 when they's no parson about." 
 
 " You have fished out of this harbour for 
 seventy-six years ? " said I, in vain trying to 
 comprehend the deprivation and dull toil of 
 that long life — trying to account for the 
 childlike smile which had continued to the 
 end of it. 
 
 " Ay, zur," said Uncle Zeb. " But, sure, 
 they be plenty o' time t' see Conch yet. Me 
 father were ninety when he died. I be only 
 eighty-three." 
 
 Uncle Zeb tottered up the hill. Soon the 
 dusk swallowed his old hulk. I never saw 
 him again. 
 
 We were seated on the Head, high above 
 the sea, watching the fleet of punts come 
 from the Mad Mull grounds and from the 
 nets along shore, for it was evening. Jack 
 had told me much of the lore of lobster- 
 catching and squid-jigging. Of winds and 
 tides and long breakers he had given me 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 125 
 
 solemn warnings — and especially of that 
 little valley down which the gusts came, 
 no man knew from where. He had im- 
 parted certain secrets concerning the 
 whereabouts of gulls' nests and juniper- 
 berry patches, for I had won his con- 
 fidence. I had been informed that Uncle 
 Tom BulPs punt was in hourly danger of 
 turning over because her spread of canvas 
 was "scandalous" great, that Bill Blud- 
 gell kept the "surliest dog t' the har- 
 bour," that the "goaats was wonderful 
 hard t' find" in the fog, that a brass 
 bracelet would cure salt-water sores on 
 the wrists, that — I cannot recall it all. 
 He had "mocked" a goat, a squid, a 
 lamb, old George Walker at prayer, and 
 " Uncle " Ruth berating " Aunt " Simon for 
 leaving the splitting-table unclean. 
 
 Then he sang this song, in a thin, sweet 
 treble, which was good to hear : 
 
 " 'Way down on Pigeon Pond Island, 
 "When daddy comes home from swilin',* 
 
 * Sealing. 
 
126 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 (Maggoty fish hnng up in the air, 
 Fried in maggoty butter) ! 
 Cakes and tea for breakfast, 
 Pork and dufi for dinner, 
 Cakes and tea for supper, 
 "When daddy comes home from swilin'." 
 
 He asked me riddles, thence he passed to 
 other questions, for he was a boy who won- 
 dered, and wondered, what lay beyond those 
 places which he could see from the highest 
 hill. I described a street and a pavement, 
 told him that the earth was round, defined 
 a team of horses, corrected his impression 
 that a church organ was played with the 
 mouth, and denied the report that the flakes 
 and stages of 'New York were the largest in 
 the world. The boys of the outports do not 
 play games — there is no time, and at any 
 rate, the old "West Country games have not 
 come down to this generation with the 
 dialect, so I told him how to play tag, 
 hide-and-go-seek and blind man's buff, and 
 proved to him that they might be in- 
 teresting, though I had to admit that 
 they might not be profitable in certain cases. 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 127 
 
 " Some men," said I, at last, " have never 
 seen the sea." 
 
 He looked at me and laughed his unbelief. 
 " Sure," said he, "not a hundred haven't ? " 
 
 " Many more than that." 
 
 " 'Tis hard t' believe, zur," he said. " Ter- 
 rible hard." 
 
 We were silent while he thought it over. 
 
 " What's the last harbour in the world ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 I hesitated. 
 
 " The very last, zur ! They do say 'tis St. 
 Johns. But, sure, zur, they must be some- 
 thing beyond. What do it be ? " After a 
 silence, he continued, speaking wistfully, 
 " What's the last harbour in all the whole 
 world, zur ? Doesn't you know ? " 
 
 It had been a raw day — gray and gusty, 
 with the wind breaking over the island from 
 a foggy sea : a sullen day. All day long 
 there had been no rest from the deep harsh 
 growl of the breakers. We were at tea in 
 Aunt Amanda's cottage; the table was 
 
128 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 spread with, dried caplin, bread and butter, 
 and tea, for Aunt Amanda, the Scotsman 
 who was of the harbour, and me. The 
 harbour water was fretting under the win- 
 dows as the swift gusts whipped over it; 
 and beyond the narrows, where the sea was 
 tumbling, the dusk was closing over the 
 frothy waves. Out there a punt was reel- 
 ing in from the Mad Mull fishing grounds ; 
 its brown sail was like a leaf driven by the 
 wind. I saw the boat dart through the nar- 
 rows to the sheltered water, and I sighed in 
 sympathy with the man who was then furl- 
 ing his wet and fluttering sail, for I, too, 
 had experienced the relief of sweeping from 
 that waste of grasping waves to the sanctu- 
 ary of the harbour. 
 
 " Do you think of the sea as a friend ? " 
 I asked Aunt Amanda. 
 
 She was a gray, stern woman, over whose 
 face, however, a tender smile was used to 
 flitting, the light lingered last in her faded 
 eyes — the daughter, wife, and mother of 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 129 
 
 punt fishermen. So she had dealt hand to 
 hand with the sea since that night, long 
 ago, when, as a wee maid, she first could 
 reach the splitting-table by standing on a 
 bucket. As a child she had tripped up the 
 path to Lookout Head, to watch her father 
 beat in from the grounds ; as a maiden, she 
 had courted when the moonlight was falling 
 upon the ripples of Lower Harbour, and the 
 punt was heaving to the spent swell of the 
 open ; as a woman she had kept watch on 
 the moods of the sea, which had possessed 
 itself of her hours of toil and leisure. In 
 the end — may the day be long in coming — 
 she will be taken to the little graveyard 
 under the Lookout in a skiff. E'ow, at my 
 suggestion, she dropped her eyes to her 
 apron, which she smoothed in an absent 
 way. She seemed to search her life — all the 
 terror, toil, and glory of it — for the answer. 
 She was not of a kind to make light replies, 
 and I knew that the word to come would be 
 of vast significance. 
 
130 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 " It do seem to me," she said, turning her 
 eyes to the darkening water, " that the say 
 is hungry for the lives o' men." 
 
 " Tut, woman ! " cried the old Scotsman, 
 his eyes all a-sparkle. " 'Tis a libel on the 
 sea. "Why wull ye speak such trash to a 
 stranger ? Have ye never heard, sir, what 
 the poet says ? " 
 
 " Well," I began to stammer. 
 
 "Aye, man," said he, "they all babble 
 about it. But have ye never read, 
 
 " * O, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried, 
 And danced in triumph o'er the waters wide, 
 The exnlting sense, the pulse's maddening play, 
 That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way ? '" 
 
 "With that, the sentimental old fellow 
 struck an attitude. His head was thrown 
 back ; his eyes were flashing ; his arm was 
 rigid, and pointing straight through the 
 window to that patch of white, far off in 
 the gathering dark, where the sea lay rag- 
 ing. It ever took a poet to carry that old 
 Scotsman off his feet — to sweep him to some 
 high, cloudy place, where the things of life 
 
SOME OUTPORT FOLK 131 
 
 rearranged and decked themselves out to 
 please his fancy. I confess, too, that his 
 enthusiasm rekindled, for a moment, my 
 third-reader interest in " a wet sheet and a 
 flowing sea" and "a wind that follows 
 fast." We have all loved well the sea of 
 our fancy. 
 
 " Grand, woman ! " he exclaimed, turning 
 to Aunt Amanda, and still a-tremble. 
 "Splendid!" 
 
 Aunt Amanda fixed him with her gray 
 eye. "I don't know," she said, softly. 
 " But I know that the say took me father 
 from me when I was a wee maid." 
 
 The Scotsman bent his head over his 
 plate, lower and lower still. His fervour 
 departed, and his face, when he looked up, 
 was full of sympathy. Of a sudden my 
 ears hearkened again to the growling break- 
 ers, and to the wind, as it ran past, leaping 
 from sea to wilderness ; and my spirit felt 
 the coming of the dark. 
 
XI 
 
 WINTER PRACTICE 
 
 IT is, then, to the outporter, to the men 
 of the fleet and to the Labrador live- 
 yere that Doctor Grenfell devotes him- 
 self. The hospital at Indian Harbour is the 
 centre of the Labrador activity; the hos- 
 pital at Sto Anthony is designed to care for 
 the needs of the French shore folk ; the hos- 
 pital at Battle Harbour — the first estab- 
 lished, and, possibly, the best equipped of 
 all — receives patients from all directions, but 
 especially from the harbours of the Strait 
 and the Gulf. In the little hospital-ship, 
 Strathcona^ the doctor himself darts here and 
 there and everywhere, all summer long, re- 
 sponding to calls, searching out the sick, 
 gathering patients for the various hospitals. 
 She is known to every harbour of the coast ; 
 and she is often overcrowded with sick bound 
 to the hospitals for treatment or operation. 
 132 
 
WINTER PEACTICE 133 
 
 Often, indeed, in cases of emergency, opera- 
 tions are performed aboard, while she tosses 
 in the rough seas. She is never a moment 
 idle while the waters are open. But in the 
 fall, when navigation closes, she must go into 
 winter quarters; and then the sick and 
 starving are sought out by dog-team and 
 komatik. There is no cessation of beneficent 
 activity; there is merely a change in the 
 manner of getting about. Summer journeys 
 are hard enough, God knows ! But winter 
 travel is a matter of much greater difficulty 
 and hardship. Not that the difficulty and 
 hardship seem ever to be perceived by the 
 mission-doctor ; quite the contrary : there is 
 if anything greater delight to be found in a 
 wild, swift race over rotten or heaving ice, 
 or in a night in the driving snow, than in run- 
 ning the StratJiGona through a nor'east gale. 
 The Indian Harbour hospital is closed in the 
 fall ; so intense is the cold, so exposed the 
 situation, so scarce the wood, so few the 
 liveyeres, that it has been found unprofitable 
 to keep it open. There is another way of 
 
134: DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 meeting the needs of the situation ; and that 
 is by despatching the Battle Harbour doctor 
 northward in midwinter. The folk know 
 that he is bound towards them — ^know the 
 points of call — can determine within a 
 month the time of his arrival. So they 
 bring the sick to these places — and patiently 
 wait. This is a hard journey — made alone 
 with the dogs. Many a night the doctor 
 must get into his sleeping bag and make 
 himself as comfortable as possible in the 
 snow, snuggled close to his dogs, for the sake 
 of the warmth of their bodies. Six hundred 
 miles north in the dead of winter, six hun- 
 dred miles back again ; it takes a man of 
 unchangeable devotion to undertake it ! 
 
 The Labrador dogs — pure and half-breed 
 " huskies," with so much of the wolf yet in 
 them that they never bark — are for the most 
 part used by the doctor on his journeys. 
 There would be no getting anywhere with- 
 out them ; and it must be said that they are 
 magnificent animals, capable of heroic 
 
WINTER PRACTICE 135 
 
 deeds. Every prosperous householder has 
 at least six or eight full-grown sled-dogs and 
 more puppies than he can keep track of. In 
 summer they lie everywhere under foot by 
 day, and by night howl in a demoniacal 
 fashion far and near ; but they fish for 
 themselves in shallow water, and are fat, 
 and may safely be stepped over. In winter 
 they are lean, desperately hungry, savage, 
 and treacherous — in particular, a menace to 
 the lives of children, whom they have been 
 known to devour. There was once a father, 
 just returned from a day's hunt on the ice, 
 who sent his son to fetch a seal from the 
 waterside ; the man had forgotten for the 
 moment that the dogs were roaming the 
 night and very hungry — and so he lost both 
 his seal and his son. The four-year-old son 
 of the Hudson Bay Company's agent at 
 Cartwright chanced last winter to fall down 
 in the snow. He was at once set upon by 
 the pack; and when he was rescued (his 
 mother told me the story) he had forty-two 
 ugly wounds on his little body. For many 
 
136 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 nights afterwards the dogs howled under the 
 window where he lay moaning. Eventually 
 those concerned in the attack were hanged 
 by the neck, which is the custom in such 
 cases. 
 
 Once, when Dr. Grenfell was wintering 
 at St. Anthony, on the French shore, there 
 came in great haste from Conch, a point 
 sixty miles distant, a komatik with an 
 urgent summons to the bedside of a man 
 who lay dying of hemorrhage. And while 
 the doctor was preparing for this journey, 
 a second komatik, despatched from another 
 place, arrived with a similar message. 
 
 " Come at once," it was. " My little boy 
 has broken his thigh." 
 
 The doctor chose first to visit the lad. 
 At ten o'clock that night he was at the bed- 
 side. It had been a dark night — black dark : 
 with the road precipitous, the dogs uncon- 
 trollable, the physician in great haste. The 
 doctor thought, many a time, that there 
 would be " more than one broken limb " by 
 
WINTER PRACTICE 137 
 
 the time of his arrival. But there was no 
 misadventure; and he found the lad lying 
 on a settle, in great pain, wondering why- 
 he must suffer so. 
 
 " Every minute or two, " says the doctor, 
 " there would be a jerk, a flash of pain, and 
 a cry to his father, who was holding him all 
 the time." 
 
 The doctor was glad " to get the chloro- 
 form mask over the boy's face " — he is a 
 sympathetic man, the doctor ; glad, always, 
 to ease pain. And at one o'clock in the 
 morning the broken bone was set and the 
 doctor had had a cup of tea ; whereupon, he 
 retired to a bed on the floor and a few 
 hours' " watch below." At daylight, when 
 he was up and about to depart, the little 
 patient had awakened and was merrily call- 
 ing to the doctor's little retriever. 
 
 " He was as merry as a cricket," says the 
 doctor, " when I bade him good-bye." 
 
 About twelve hours on the way to Conch, 
 where the man lay dying of hemorrhage 
 
138 DK. GEENFELL^S PARISH 
 
 — a two days' journey — the doctor fell in 
 with a dog-train bearing the mail. And 
 the mail-man had a letter — a hasty sum- 
 mons to a man in great pain some sixty 
 miles in another direction. It was impossi- 
 ble to respond. " That call," says the doctor, 
 sadly, " owing to sheer impossibility, was not 
 answered." It was haste away to Conch, 
 over the ice and snow — for the most of 
 the time on the ice of the sea — in order that 
 the man who lay dying there might be suc- 
 coured. But there was another interruption. 
 When the dog-train reached the coast, there 
 was a man waiting to intercept it : the news 
 of the doctor's probable coming had spread. 
 
 " I've a fresh team o' dogs," sir, said he, 
 " t' take you t' the island. There's a man 
 there, an' he's wonderful sick." 
 
 Would the doctor go? Yes— he would 
 go ! But he had no sooner reached that 
 point of the mainland whence he was bound 
 across a fine stretch of ice to the island 
 than he was again intercepted. It was a 
 young man, this time, whose mother lay 
 
WINTER PRACTICE 139 
 
 ill, with no other Protestant family living 
 within fifty miles. Would the doctor help 
 her ? Yes — the doctor would ; and did. 
 And when he was about to be on his way 
 again 
 
 " Could you bear word," said the woman, 
 "f Mister Elliot t' come bury my boy? 
 He said he'd come, sir ; but now my little 
 lad has been lying dead, here, since Janu- 
 ary." 
 
 It was then early in March. Mr. Elliot 
 was a Protestant fisherman who was accus- 
 tomed to bury the Protestant dead of that 
 district. Yes — the doctor would bear word 
 to him. Having promised this, he set out 
 to visit the sick man on the island; for 
 whom, also, he did what he could. 
 
 Oif again towards Conch — now with 
 fresh teams, which had been provided by 
 the friends of the man who lay there dying. 
 And by the way a man brought his little 
 son for examination and treatment — " a lad 
 of three years," says the doctor ; " a bright. 
 
140 DR. GEENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 healthy, embryo fisherman, light-haired and 
 blue-eyed, a veritable celt." 
 
 "And what's the matter with him?" 
 was the physician's question. 
 
 " HeVe a club foot, sir," was the answer. 
 
 And so it turned out : the lad had a club 
 foot. He was fond of telling his mother 
 that he had a right foot and a wrong one. 
 "The wrong one, mama," said he, "is no 
 good," He was to be a cripple for life — 
 utterly incapacitated: the fishing does not 
 admit of club feet. But the doctor made 
 arrangements for the child's transportation 
 to the St. Anthony hospital, where he could, 
 without doubt be cured ; and then hurried 
 on. 
 
 The way now led through a district des- 
 perately impoverished — as much by igno- 
 rance and indolence as by anything else. 
 At one settlement of tilts there were forty 
 souls, " without a scrap of food or money," 
 who depended upon their neighbours — and 
 the opening of navigation was still three 
 
WINTER PEACTICE 141 
 
 months distant ! In one tilt there lay what 
 seemed to be a bundle of rags. 
 
 " And who is this ? " the doctor asked. 
 
 It was a child. " The fair hair of a blue- 
 eyed boy of about ten years disclosed 
 itself," says the doctor. "Stooping over 
 him I attempted to turn his face towards 
 me. It was drawn with pain, and a moan 
 escaped the poor little fellow's lips. He 
 had disease of the spine, with open sores in 
 three places. He was stark naked, and he 
 was starved to a skeleton. He gave me a 
 bright smile before I left, but I confess to a 
 shudder of horror at the thought that his 
 lot might have been mine. Of course the 
 ' fear of pauperizing ' had to disappear be- 
 fore the claims of humanity. Yet, there, in 
 the depth of winter," the doctor asks, with 
 infinite compassion, " would not a lethal 
 draught be the kindest friend of that little 
 one of Him that loved the children ? " 
 
 For five days the doctor laboured in 
 Conch, healing many of the folk, helping 
 
142 BE. GRENFELL^S PARISH 
 
 more; and at the end of that period the 
 man who has suffered the hemorrhage was 
 so far restored that with new dogs the 
 doctor set out for Canada Bay, still travel- 
 ling southward. Ther^, as he says, "we 
 had many interesting cases." One of these 
 involved an operation : that of " opening a 
 knee-joint and removing a loose body," with 
 the result that a fisherman who had long 
 been crippled was made quite well again. 
 Then there came a second call from Conch. 
 Seventeen men had come for the physician, 
 willing to haul the komatik themselves, if 
 no dogs were to be had. To this call the 
 doctor immediately responded ; and having 
 treated patients at Conch and by the way, 
 he set out upon the return journey to St. 
 Anthony, fearing that his absence had al- 
 ready been unduly prolonged. And he had 
 not gone far on the way before he fell in 
 with another komatik, provided with a box, 
 in which lay an old woman bound to St. 
 Anthony hospital, in the care of her sons, 
 to have her foot amputated. 
 
WINTER PRACTICE 143 
 
 Crossing Hare Bay, the doctor had a 
 slight mishap — rather amusing, too, he 
 thinks. 
 
 " One of my dogs fell through the ice," 
 says he. " There was a biting nor' west 
 ■wind blowing, and the temperature was 
 ten degrees below zero. When we were 
 one mile from the land, I got off to run 
 and try the ice. It suddenly gave way, 
 and in I fell. It did not take me long to 
 get out, for I have had some little ex- 
 perience, and the best advice sounds odd: 
 it is *keep cool.' But the nearest house 
 being at least ten miles, it meant, then, 
 almost one's life to have no dry clothing. 
 Fortunately, I had. The driver at once 
 galloped the dogs back to the woods we 
 had left, and I had as hard a mile's run- 
 ning as ever I had ; for my clothing was 
 growing to resemble the armour of an an- 
 cient knight more and more, every j^ard, 
 and though in my youth I was accustomed 
 to break the ice to bathe if necessary, I 
 never tried running a race in a coat of 
 
144 DE. GREKFELL^S PARISH 
 
 mail. By the time I arrived at the trees 
 and got out of the wind, my driver had a 
 rubber poncho spread on the snow under 
 a snug spruce thicket ; and I was soon as 
 dry and a great deal warmer than before." 
 At St. Anthony, the woman's foot was 
 amputated; and in two days the patient 
 was talking of " getting up." Meantime, a 
 komatik had arrived in haste from a point 
 on the northwest coast — a settlement one 
 hundred and twenty miles distant. The 
 doctor was needed there — and the doctor 
 went ! 
 
 This brief and inadequate description of 
 a winter's journey may not serve to indicate 
 the hardship of the life the doctor leads : he 
 has small regard for that ; but it may faintly 
 apprise the reader of the character of the 
 work done, and of the will with which the 
 doctor does it. One brief journey ! The 
 visitation of but sixty miles of coast ! Add 
 to this the numerous journeys of that winter, 
 the various summer voyages of the Strath- 
 
THE DOCTOR ON A WINTER'S JOURNEY" 
 
WINTER PRACTICE 145 
 
 cona ; conceive that the folk of two thou- 
 sand miles are visited every year, often 
 twice a year: then multiply by ten — for 
 the mission has been in efficient existence 
 for ten years — and the reader may reach 
 some faint conception of the sum of good 
 wrought by this man. But without know- 
 ing the desolate land — without observing 
 the emaciated bodies of the children — 
 without hearing the cries of distress — it is 
 impossible adequately to realize the bless- 
 ing his devotion has brought to the coast. 
 
XII 
 
 THE CHAMPION 
 
 THE Deep-sea Mission is not con- 
 cerned chiefly with the souls of the 
 folk, nor yet exclusively with their 
 bodies : it endeavours to provide them with 
 religious instruction, to heal their ailments ; 
 but it is quite as much interested, appar- 
 ently, in improving their material condition. 
 To the starving it gives food, to the naked 
 clothing ; but it must not be supposed that 
 charity is indiscriminately distributed. 
 That is not the case. Far from it. When 
 a man can cut wood for the steamer or hos- 
 pitals in return for the food he is given, for 
 example, he is required to do so ; but the 
 unhappy truth is that a man can cut very 
 little wood " on a winter's diet " exclusively 
 of flour. " You gets weak all of a suddent, 
 zur," one expressed it to me. In his effort 
 
 to "help the people help themselves" the 
 146 
 
THE CHAMPION 147 
 
 doctor has established cooperative stores 
 and various small industries. The result 
 has been twofold : the regeneration of sev- 
 eral communities, and an outbreak of hatred 
 and dishonest abuse on the part of the trad- 
 ers, who have too long fattened on the iso- 
 lation and miseries of the people. The co- 
 operative stores, I believe, are thriving, and 
 the small industries promise well. Thus the 
 mission is at once the hope and comfort of 
 the coast. The man on the Strathcona is 
 the only man, in all the long history of that 
 wretched land, to offer a helping hand to 
 the whole people from year to year without 
 ill temper and without hope of gain. 
 
 *' But I can't do everything," says he. 
 
 And that is true. There is much that the 
 mission-doctor cannot do — delicate opera- 
 tions, for which the more skilled hand of a 
 specialist is needed. For a time, one season, 
 an eminent surgeon, of Boston, the first of 
 many, it is hoped, cruised on the Strathcona 
 and most generously operated at Battle 
 Harbour. The mission gathered the pa- 
 
148 DE. GRENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 tients to the hospital from far and near be- 
 fore the surgeon arrived. Folk who had 
 looked forward in dread to a painful death, 
 fast approaching, were of a sudden promised 
 life. There was a man coming, they were 
 told, above the skill of the mission surgeons, 
 who could surely cure them. The deed was 
 as good as the promise : many operations 
 were performed ; all the sick who came for 
 healing were healed ; the hope of not one 
 was disappointed. Folk who had suffered 
 years of pain were restored. ]^ever had 
 such a thing been known on the Labrador. 
 Men marvelled. The surgeon was like a 
 man raising the dead. But there was a 
 woman who is now, perhaps, dead ; she 
 lacked the courage. Day after day for two 
 weeks she waited for the Boston surgeon ; 
 but when he came she fled in terror of the 
 knife. Her ailment was mortal in that 
 land ; but she might easily have been cured ; 
 and she fled home when she knew that the 
 healer had come. 'No doubt her children 
 now know what it is to want a mother. 
 
THE CHAMPION 149 
 
 Dr. Grenfell will let no man oppress his 
 people when his arm is strong enough to 
 champion them. There was once a rich man 
 (so I was told before I met the doctor) — a 
 man of influence and wide acquaintance — 
 Avhose business was in a remote harbour of 
 Newfoundland. He did a great wrong; 
 and when the news of it came to the ears of 
 the mission-doctor, the anchor of the Strath- 
 cona came up in a hurry, and off she steamed 
 to that place. 
 
 " Now," said the doctor to this man, " you 
 must make what amends you can, and you 
 must confess your sin." 
 
 The man laughed aloud. It seemed to 
 him, no doubt, a joke that the mission-doc- 
 tor should interfere in the affairs of one so 
 rich who knew the politicians at St. Johns. 
 But the mission-doctor was also a magis- 
 trate. 
 
 " I say," said he, deliberately, " that you 
 must pay one thousand dollars and confess 
 your sin." 
 
 The man cursed the doctor with great 
 
160 DR. GRENFELUS PARISH 
 
 laughter, and dared him to do his worst. 
 The joke still had point. 
 
 "I warn you," said the doctor, "that I 
 will arrest you if you do not do precisely as 
 I say." 
 
 The man pointed out to the doctor that 
 his magisterial district lay elsewhere, and 
 again defied him. 
 
 "Very true," said the doctor; "but I 
 warn you that I have a crew quite capable 
 of taking you into it." 
 
 The joke was losing its point. But the 
 man blustered that he, too, had a crew. 
 
 " You must make sure," said the doctor, 
 " that they love you well enough to fight 
 for you. On Sunday evening," he contin- 
 ued, " you will appear at the church at seven 
 o'clock and confess your sin before the con- 
 gregation ; and next week you will pay the 
 money as I have said." 
 
 " I'll see you in h — 11 first ! " replied the 
 man, defiantly. 
 
 At the morning service the doctor an- 
 
THE CHAMPION 151 
 
 nounced that a sinful man would confess his 
 sin before them all that night. There was 
 great excitement. Other men might be pre- 
 vailed upon to make so humiliating a con- 
 fession, the folk said, but not this one — not 
 this rich man, whom they hated and feared, 
 because he had so long pitilessly oppressed 
 them. So they were not surprised when at 
 the evening service the sinful man did not 
 show his face. 
 
 " Will you please to keep your seats," said 
 the doctor, " while I go fetch that man." 
 
 He found the man in a neighbour's house, 
 on his knees in prayer, with his friends. 
 They were praying fervently, it is said ; but 
 whether or not that the heart of the doctor 
 might be softened I do not know. 
 
 "Prayer," said the doctor, "is a good 
 thing in its place, but it doesn't * go ' here. 
 Come with me." 
 
 The man meekly went with the doctor ; 
 he was led up the aisle of the church, was 
 placed where all the people could see him ; 
 
152 DR. GRENFELL'S PARISH 
 
 and then he was asked many questions, after 
 the doctor had described the great sin of 
 which he was guilty. 
 
 " Did you do this thing ? " 
 
 "I did." 
 
 " You are an evil man, of whom the peo- 
 ple should beware ? " 
 
 " I am." 
 
 " You deserve the punishment of man and 
 God?" 
 
 "I do." 
 
 There was much more, and at the end of 
 it all the doctor told the man that the good 
 God would forgive him if he should ask in 
 true faith and repentance, but that the peo- 
 ple, being human, could not. For a whole 
 year, he charged the people, they must not 
 speak to that man ; but if at the end of that 
 time he had shown an honest disposition to 
 mend his ways, they might take him to 
 their hearts. 
 
 The end of the story is that the man paid 
 the money and left the place. 
 
THE CHAMPION 153 
 
 This relentless judge, on a stormy day of 
 last July, carried many bundles ashore at 
 Cartwright, in Sandwich Bay of the Labra- 
 dor. The wife of the Hudson Bay Com- 
 pany's agent exclaimed with delight when 
 she opened them. They were Christmas 
 gifts from the children of the " States " to 
 the lads and little maids of that coast. With 
 almost all there came a little letter addressed 
 to the unknown child who was to receive 
 the toy ; they were filled with loving words 
 — with good wishes, coming in childish sin- 
 cerity from the warm little hearts. The 
 doctor never forgets the Christmas gifts. 
 He is the St. Nicholas of that coast. If he 
 ever weeps at all, I should think it would be 
 when he hears that despite his care some 
 child has been neglected. The wife of the 
 agent stowed away the gifts against the 
 time to come. 
 
 "It makes them very happy," said the 
 agent's wife. 
 
 " Not long ago," I chanced to say, " I saw 
 a little girl with a stick of wood for a dolly. 
 
154 DE. GEENFELL'S PAEISH 
 
 Are they not afraid to play with these pretty 
 things ? " 
 
 "They are^'* she laughed. "They use 
 them for ornaments. But that doesn't mat- 
 ter. It makes them happy just to look at 
 them." 
 
 We all laughed. 
 
 " And yet," she continued, " they do play 
 with them, sometimes, after all. There is a 
 little girl up the bay who has hissed the 
 paint off her dolly ! " 
 
 Thus and all the time, in storm and sun- 
 shine, summer and winter weather, Grenfell 
 of the Deep-sea Mission goes about doing 
 good ; if it's not in a boat, it's in a dog-sled. 
 He is what he likes to call "a Christian 
 man." But he is also a hero — at once the 
 bravest and the most beneficently useful 
 man I know. If he regrets his isolation, if 
 the hardship of the life sometimes oppresses 
 him, no man knows it. He does much, but 
 there is much more to do. If the good peo- 
 ple of the world would but give a little more 
 
THE CHAMPION 155 
 
 of what they have so abundantly — and if 
 they could but know the need, they would 
 surely do that — ^joy might be multiplied on 
 that coast ; nor would any man be wronged 
 by misguided charity. 
 
 " What a man does for the love of God," 
 the doctor once said, " he does differently." 
 
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 Denizens of the Deep 
 
 By FRANK T. BULLEN 
 
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 Not the least 
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 Livingston Bull 
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 DENIZENS OF 
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By MARGARET 
 SANGSTER 
 
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 ** If ever there was an author whose personality shone 
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 iAARGARETE. SANGSTER 
 
 that author. Mrs. Sang- 
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 That was to be expected, 
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 — The Lam^, 
 
Essays 
 
 Fiction 
 
 JSy JAMES M. LUDLOW 
 
 Incentives for Life. Personal 
 
 and Public. i2mo, cloth, 
 
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 " Dr. Ludlow shows versatility and rare culture in 
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 marvelous storehouse of illustration from which the 
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 Deborah. A Tale of the Times 
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 7ates of the West Virile ^ true, tender 
 
 By RALPH CONNOR 
 
 The Sky Pilot; A Tale of the Foothills. 
 1 2mo, cloth, illustrated .... Price, ^1.25 
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 i2mo, cloth Price, ^1.50 
 
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 1 2mo, cloth, cheaper edition . . .25 
 
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 The world has known and today Ralph Connor 
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V 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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