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