A Labrador Doctor Part 14

Never shall I forget dragging ourselves in among those big trees with our axes, and tumbling to sleep in a grave in the snow, in spite of the elements. In this hole in a sleeping-bag, protected by the light drift which blew in, one rested as comfortably as in a more conventional type of feather bed. Nor, when I think of De Quincey's idea of supreme happiness before the glowing logs, can I forget that gorgeous blaze which the watch kept up by felling trees full length into the fire, so that our Yule logs were twenty feet long, and the ruddy glow and crackling warmth went smashing through the hurtling snowdrift. True, it was cold taking off our dripping clothing, which as it froze on us made progress as difficult as if we were encased in armour. But dancing up and down before a huge fire in the crisp open air under G.o.d's blue sky gave as pleasing a reaction as doing the same thing in the dusty, germ-laden atmosphere of a ballroom in the small hours of the night, when one would better be in bed, if the joys of efficiency and accomplishment are the durable pleasure of life.

It was a real picnic which we had at the mill. Our visit was as welcome as it was unexpected, and we celebrated it by the whole day off, when all hands went "rabbiting." When at the end, hot and tired, we gathered round a huge log fire in the woods and discussed boiling cocoa and pork buns, we all agreed that it had been a day worth living for.

Logging had progressed favourably. Logs were close at hand; and the whole enterprise spelled cash coming in that the people had never earned before. The time had also arrived to prepare the machinery for cutting the timber; boxes were being unpacked, and weird iron "parts"

revealed to us, that had all the interest of a Chinese puzzle, with the added pleasure of knowing that they stood for much if we solved the problems rightly.

When next we saw the mill it was spring, and the puffing smoke and white heaps of lumber that graced the point and met our vision as we rounded Breakheart Point will not soon be forgotten. Only one trouble had proved insurmountable. The log-hauler would not deliver the goods to the rotary saw. Later, with the knowledge that the whole apparatus was upside down, it did not seem so surprising after all. One accident also marred the year's record. While a party of children had been crossing the ice in the harbour to school, a treacherous rapid had caused it to give way and leave a number of them in the water. One of my English volunteers, being a first-cla.s.s athlete, had by swimming saved five lives, but two had been lost, and the young fellow himself so badly chilled that it had taken the hot body of one of the fathers of the rescued children, wrapped up in bed with him in lieu of a hot-water bottle, to restore his circulation.

The second fall was our hardest period. The bills for our lumber sold had not been paid in time for us to purchase the absolutely essential stock of food for the winter; and if we could not get a store of food, we knew that our men could not go logging. It was food, not cash, which they needed in the months when their own slender stock of provisions gave out, and when all communication was cut off by the frozen sea.

For a venture which seemed to us problematical in its outcome, we did not dare to borrow money or to induce friends to invest; and of course Mission funds were not available. For the day has not yet arrived when all those who seek by their gifts to hasten the coming of the Kingdom of G.o.d on earth recognize that to give the opportunity to men to provide decently for their families and homes is as effective work for the Master, whose first attribute was love, as patching up the unfortunate victims of semi-starvation. The inculcation of the particular intellectual conception which the donor may hold of religion, or as to how, after death, the soul can get into heaven, is, as the result of the Church teaching, still considered far the most important line of effort. The emphasis on hospitals is second, partly at least because, so it has seemed to me as a doctor of medicine, the more obvious personal benefit thereby conferred renders the recipients more impressionable to the views considered desirable to promulgate.

Yet only to-day, as I came home from our busy operating-room, I felt how little real gain the additional time on earth often is either to the world outside or even to the poor sufferers themselves. In order to have one's early teachings on these matters profoundly shaken, one has only to work as a surgeon in a country where tuberculosis, beri-beri, and other preventable diseases, and especially the chronic malnutrition of poverty fills your clinic with suffering children, who at least are victims and not responsible spiritually for their "punishment." Of course, the magnitude of service to the world of every act of unselfishness, and much more of whole lives of devotion, such as that of Miss Sullivan, the teacher of Miss Helen Keller, can never be rightly estimated by any purely material conception of human life.

Love is dangerously near to sentimentality when we actually prefer remedial to prophylactic charity--and I personally feel that it is false economy even from the point of view of mission funds. The industrial mission, the educational mission, and the orphanage work at least rank with and should go hand in hand with hospitals in any true interpretation of a gospel of love.

In subsequent years the nearest attempt to finance such commonly called "side issues of the work" has been with us through the medium of a discretionary fund. Into this are put sums of money specially given by personal friends, who are content to leave the allocation of their expenditure in the hands of the worker on the actual field. This fund is, of course, paid out in the same way as other mission funds, and is as strictly supervised by the auditors. While it leaves possibly more responsibility than some of us are worthy of, it enables individuality to play that part in mission business which every one recognizes to be all-important in the ordinary business of the world.

No money, however, from this fund has ever gone into the mill or in a.s.sisting the cooperative stores.

Sorry as one feels to confess it, I have seen money wasted and lost through red tape in the mission business. And after all is not mission business part of the world's business, and must not the measure of success depend largely on the same factors in the one case as in the other? Has one man more than another the right to be called "missionary," for of what use is any man in the world if he has no mission in it? Christ's life is one long emphasis on the point that in the last a.n.a.lysis, when something has to be done, it is the individual who has to do it. It is, we believe, a fact of paramount importance for efficiency and economy; and the loyalty of G.o.d in committing such trust to us, when He presumably knows exactly how unworthy we are of it, is the explanation of life's enigma.

When at last our food and freight were purchased for the loggers for the winter and landed by the mail steamer nine miles from the mill, the whole bay was frozen and five miles of ice already over six inches thick. The hull of the Strathcona was three eighths of an inch soft steel; but there was no other way to transport the goods but on her, excepting by sledges--a very painful and impracticable method.

It was decided that as we could not possibly b.u.t.t through the ice, we must b.u.t.t over it. The whole company of some thirty men helped us to move everything, including chains and anchors, to the after end of the ship, and to pile up the barrels of pork, flour, sugar, mola.s.ses, etc., together with boats and all heavy weights, so that her fore foot came above the water level and she looked as if she were sinking by the stern. We then proceeded to crash into the ice. Up onto it we ran, and then broke through, doing no damage whatever to her hull. The only trouble was that sometimes she would get caught fast in the trough, and it was exceedingly hard to back her astern for a second drive. To counteract this all hands stood on one rail, each carrying a weight, and then rushed over to the other side, backward and forward at the word of command, thus causing the steamer to roll. It was a very slow process, but we got there, though in true Biblical fashion, literally "reeling to and fro like drunken men."

While the mill was in its cradle, we in the Strathcona were cruising the northern Labrador waters. We witnessed that year, off the mighty Kaumajets, the most remarkable storm of lightning that I have ever seen in those parts. Inky ma.s.ses hid the h.o.a.ry heads of those tremendous cliffs. Away to the northwest, over the high land called Saeglek, a lurid light just marked the sharp outline of the mills.

Ahead, where we were trying to make the entrance to Hebron Bay, an apparently impenetrable wall persisted. Seaward night had already obscured the horizon; but the moon, hidden behind the curtain of the storm, now and again fitfully illuminated some icebergs lazily heaving on the ocean swell. Almost every second a vivid flash, now on one side, now on the other, would show us a glimpse of the land looming darkly ahead. The powers of darkness seemed at play; while the sea, the ice, the craggy cliffs, and the flashing heavens were advertising man's puny power.

An amusing incident took place in one isolated harbour. A patient came on board for medicine, and after examining him I went below to make it up. When I came on deck again I gave the medicine to one I took to be my man, and then sent him ash.o.r.e to get the twenty-five cent fee for the Mission which he had forgotten. No sooner had he gone than another man came and asked if his medicine was ready. I had to explain to him that the man just climbing over the rail had it. The odd thing was that the latter, having paid for it, positively refused to give it up.

True, he had not said that he was ill, but the medicine looked good (Heaven save the mark!) and he "guessed that it would suit his complaint all right."

At the mill we found that quite a large part of the timberland was over limestone, while near our first dam there was some very white marble. We fully intended to erect a kiln, using our refuse for fuel, for the land is loaded with humic acid, and only plants like blueberries, conifers, and a very limited flora flourish on it. Some friends in England, however, hearing of marble in the bay, which it was later discovered formed an entire mountain, commenced a marble mine near the entrance. The material there is said to be excellent for statuary. Even this small discovery of natural resources encouraged us. For having neither road, telegraph, nor mail service to the mill, we hoped that the development of these things might help in our own enterprise.

For ten years the little mill has run, giving work to the locality, better houses, a new church and school, and indeed created a new village.

The only trouble with this North country's own peculiar winter work, fur-hunting, is that its very nature limits its supply. In my early days in the country, fur in Labrador was very cheap. Seldom did even a silver fox fetch a hundred dollars. Beaver, lynx, wolverine, wolves, bears, and other skins were priced proportionately. Still, some men lived very well out of furring. We came to the conclusion that the only way to improve conditions in this line was to breed some of the animals in captivity. We did not then know of any enterprise of that kind, but I remembered in the zoological gardens at Washington seeing a healthy batch of young fox pups born in captivity.

Life is short. Things have to be crowded into it. So we started that year an experimental fox farm at St. Anthony. A few uprights from the woods and some rolls of wire are a fox farm. We put it close by the hospital, thinking that it would be less trouble. The idea, we rejoice to know, was perfectly right; but we had neither time, study, nor experience to teach us how to manage the animals. Very soon we had a dozen couples, red, white, patch, and one silver pair. Some of the young fox pups were very tame, for I find an old record written by a professor of Harvard University, while he was on board the Strathcona on one trip when we were bringing some of the little creatures to St.

Anthony. He describes the state of affairs as follows: "Dr. Grenfell at one time had fifteen little foxes aboard which he was carrying to St. Anthony to start a fox farm there. Some of these little animals had been brought aboard in blubber casks, and their coats were very sticky. After a few days they were very tame and played with the dogs; were all over the deck, fell down the companionway, were always having their tails and feet stepped on, and yelping for pain, when not yelling for food. The long-suffering seaman who took care of them said, 'I been cleaned out that fox box. It do be shockin'. I been in a courageous turmoil my time, but dis be the head smell ever I witnessed.'"

When the farm was erected, every schooner entering the harbour was interested in it, and a deep-cut pathway soon developed as the crews went up to see the animals. The reds and one patch were very tame, and always came out to greet us. One of the reds loved nothing better than to be caught and hugged, and squealed with delight like a child when you took notice of it. The whites, and still more the silvers, were always very shy; and though we never reared a single pup, there were some born and destroyed by the old ones.

As the years pa.s.sed we decided to close up the little farm, particularly after a certain kind of sickness which resembled strychnine poisoning had attacked and destroyed three of the animals which were especial pets. We then converted the farm into a garden with a gla.s.s house for our seedling vegetables.

Meanwhile the industry had been developed by a Mr. Beetz in Quebec Labrador with very marked economic success; and in Prince Edward Island with such tremendous profit that it soon became the most important industry in the Province. Enormous prices were paid for stock. I remembered a schooner in the days of our farm (1907) bringing me in four live young silvers, and asking two hundred dollars for the lot. We had enough animals and refused to buy them. In 1914 one of our distant neighbours, who had caught a live s.l.u.t in pup, sold her with her little brood for ten thousand dollars. We at once started an agitation to encourage the industry locally, and the Government pa.s.sed regulations that only foxes bred in the Colony could be exported alive. The last wild one sold was for twenty-five dollars to a buyer, and resold for something like a thousand dollars by him. A large number of farms grew up and met with more or less success, one big one especially in Labrador, which is still running. We saw there this present year some delightful little broods, also some mink and marten (sables), the prettiest little animals to watch possible. For some reason the success of this farm so far has not been what was hoped for it. Indeed, even in Prince Edward Island the furor has somewhat died down owing to the war; though at the close of the war it is antic.i.p.ated that the industry will go on steadily and profitably. Are not sheep, angora goats, oxen, and other animals just the result of similar efforts? If fox-farming some day should actually supersede the use of the present sharp-toothed leg trap, no small gain would have been effected. A fox now trapped in those horrible teeth remains imprisoned generally till he perishes of cold, exhaustion, or fear.

Though the fur trapper as a rule is a most gentle creature, the "quality of mercy is not strained" in furring.

CHAPTER XIV

THE CHILDREN'S HOME

"What's that schooner bound South at this time of year for?" I asked the skipper of a fishing vessel who had come aboard for treatment the second summer I was on the coast.

"I guess, Doctor, that that's the Yankee what's been down North for a load of Huskeymaws. What do they want with them when they gets them?"

"They'll put them in a cage and show them at ten cents a head. They're taking them to the World's Fair in Chicago."

People of every sort crowded to see the popular Eskimo Encampment on the Midway. The most taking attraction among the groups displayed was a little boy, son of a Northern Chieftain, Kaiachououk by name; and many a nickel was thrown into the ring that little Prince Pomiuk might show his dexterity with the thirty-foot lash of his dog whip.

One man alone of all who came to stare at the little people from far-off Labrador took a real interest in the child. It was the Rev.

C.C. Carpenter, who had spent many years of his life as a clergyman on the Labrador coast. But one day Mr. Carpenter missed his little friend. Pomiuk was found on a bed of sickness in his dark hut. An injury to his thigh had led to the onset of an insidious hip disease.

The Exhibition closed soon after, and the Eskimos went north. But Pomiuk was not forgotten, and Mr. Carpenter sent him letter after letter, though he never received an answer. The first year the band of Eskimos reached as far north as Ramah, but Pomiuk's increasing sufferings made it impossible for them to take him farther that season.

Meanwhile in June, 1895, we again steamed out through the Narrows of St. John's Harbour, determined to push as far north as the farthest white family. A dark foggy night in August found us at the entrance of that marvellous gorge called Nakvak. We pushed our way cautiously in some twenty miles from the entrance. Suddenly the watch sang out, "Light on the starboard bow!" and the sound of our steamer whistle echoed and reechoed in endless cadences between those mighty cliffs.

Three rifle shots answered us, soon a boat b.u.mped our side, and a hearty Englishman sprang over the rail.

It was George Ford, factor of the Hudson Bay Company at that post.

During the evening's talk he told me of a group of Eskimos still farther up the fjord having with them a dying boy. Next day I had my first glimpse of little Prince Pomiuk. We found him naked and haggard, lying on the rocks beside the tiny "tubik."

The Eskimos were only too glad to be rid of the responsibility of the sick lad, and, furthermore, he was "no good fishing." So the next day saw us steaming south again, carrying with us the boy and his one treasured possession--a letter from a clergyman at Andover, Ma.s.sachusetts. It contained a photograph, and when I showed it to Pomiuk he said, "Me even love him."

A letter was sent to the address given, and some weeks later came back an answer. "Keep him," it said. "He must never know cold and loneliness again. I write for a certain magazine, and the children in 'The Corner' will become his guardians." Thus the "Corner Cot" was founded, and occupied by the little Eskimo Prince for the brief remainder of his life.

On my return the following summer the child's joyful laughter greeted me as he said, "Me Gabriel Pomiuk now." A good Moravian Brother had come along during the winter and christened the child by the name of the angel of comfort.

In a sheltered corner of a little graveyard on the Labrador coast rests the tiny body of this true prince. When he died the doctor in charge of the hospital wrote me that the building seemed desolate without his smiling, happy face and unselfish presence. The night that he was buried the mysterious aurora lit up the vault of heaven. The Innuits, children of the Northland, call it "the spirits of the dead at play." But it seemed to us a shining symbol of the joy in the City of the King that another young soldier had won his way home.

The Roman Catholic Church is undoubtedly correct in stating that the first seven years of his life makes the child. Missions have always emphasized the importance of the children from a purely propaganda point of view. But our Children's Home was not begun for any such reason. Like Topsy, "it just grow'd." I had been summoned to a lonely headland, fifty miles from our hospital at Indian Harbour, to see a very sick family. Among the spruce trees in a small hut lived a Scotch salmon fisher, his wife and five little children. When we anch.o.r.ed off the promontory we were surprised to receive no signs of welcome. When we landed and entered the house we found the mother dead on the bed and the father lying on the floor dying. Next morning we improvised two coffins, contributed from the wardrobes of all hands enough black material for a "seemly" funeral, and later, steaming up the bay to a sandy stretch of land, buried the two parents with all the ceremonies of the Church--and found ourselves left with five little mortals in black sitting on the grave mound. We thought that we had done all that could be expected of a doctor, but we now found the difference. It looked as if G.o.d expected more. An uncle volunteered to a.s.sume one little boy and we sailed away with the remainder of the children.

Having no place to keep them, we wrote to a friendly newspaper in New England and advertised for foster parents. One person responded. A young farmer's wife wrote: "I am just married to a farmer in the country, and miss the chance to teach children in Sunday-School, or even to get to church, it is so far away. I think that I can feed two children for the Lord's sake. If you will send them along, I will see that they do not want for anything." We shipped two, and began what developed into our Children's Home with the balance of the stock.

We had everything to learn in the rearing of children, having had only the hygienic side of their development to attend to previously. One of the two which we kept turned out very well, becoming a fully trained nurse. The other failed. Both of those who went to New England did well, the superior discipline of their foster mother being no doubt responsible. The following fall I made a special journey to see the latter. It was a small farm on which they lived, and a little baby had just arrived. Only high ideals could have persuaded the woman to accept the added responsibility. The children were as bright and jolly as possible.

Among the other functions which have fallen to my lot to perform is the ungrateful task of unpaid magistrate, or justice of the peace. In this capacity a little later I was called on to try a mother, who in a Labrador village had become a widow and later married a man with six children who refused to accept her three-year-old little girl. When I happened along, the baby was living alone in the mother's old shack, a mud-walled hut, and she or the neighbours went in and tended it as they could. None of the few neighbours wanted permanently to a.s.sume the added expense of the child, so dared not accept it temporarily. It was sitting happily on the floor playing with a broken saucer when I came in. It showed no fear of a stranger; indeed, it made most friendly overtures. I had no right to send the new husband to jail. I could not fine him, for he had no money. There was no jail in Labrador, anyhow. My special constable was a very stout fisherman, a family man, who proposed to nurse the child till I could get it to some place where it could be properly looked after. When we steamed away, we had the baby lashed into a swing cot. It became very rough, and the baby, of course, crawled out and was found in the scuppers. It did everything that it ought not to do, but which we knew that it would. But we got it to the hospital at last and the nurse received it right to her heart.

In various ways my family grew at an alarming rate, once the general principle was established. On my early summer voyage to the east coast of Labrador I found at Indian Harbour Hospital a little girl of four.

In the absence of her father, who was hunting, and while her mother lay sick in bed, she had crawled out of the house and when found in the snow had both legs badly frozen. They became gangrenous halfway to the knee, and her father had been obliged to chop them both off. An operation gave her good stumps; but what use was she in Labrador with no legs? So she joined our family, and we gave her such good new limbs that when I brought her into Government House at Halifax, where one of our nurses had taken her to school temporarily, and she ran into the room with two other little girls, the Governor could scarcely tell which was our little cripple Kirkina.

The following fall as we left for the South our good friend, the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company, told me that on an island in the large inlet known to us as Eskimo Bay a native family, both hungry and naked, were living literally under the open sky. We promised to try and find them and help them with some warm clothing.

Having steamed round the island and seen no signs of life, we were on the point of leaving when a tiny smoke column betrayed the presence of human life--and with my family-man mate we landed as a search party.

Against the face of a sheer rock a single sheet of light cotton duck covered the abode of a woman with a nursing baby. They were the only persons at home. The three boys and a father comprised the remainder of the family. We soon found the two small boys. They were practically stark naked, but fat as curlews, being full of wild berries with which their bodies were stained bright blues and reds. They were a jolly little couple, as unconcerned about their environment as Robinson Crusoe after five years on his island. Soon the father came home. I can see him still--the vacant brown face of a very feeble-minded half-breed, ragged and tattered and almost bootless. He was carrying an aged single-barrelled boy's gun in one hand and a belated sea-gull in the other, which bird was destined for the entire evening meal of the family. A half-wild-looking hobbledehoy boy of fifteen years also joined the group.