A Labrador Doctor Part 7

It only wanted an adventure such as we had one day while sailing up a fjord on a prosaic professional call, when we upset our cutter and had to camp for the night, to give spice to our other experiences, and made us wish to return another year, better equipped, and with a more competent staff.

I am far from being the only person from the outside world who has experienced what Wallace describes as "the Lure of the Labrador." It was a genuine surprise to me one morning to find ice on deck--a scale of sparkling crystals most beautifully picking out the water-line of our little craft. It was only then that I realized that October had come. The days, so full of incident, had pa.s.sed away like ships in the night. Whither away was the question? We could not stay even though we felt the urgent call to remain. So "Heigho for the southward bar" and a visit to St. John's to try and arouse interest in the new-discovered problems, before we should once more let go our stern lines and be bowling homeward before the fall nor'westers to dear old England.

Home-going craft had generously carried our story before us to the city of St. John's. The Board of Trade commended our effort. The papers had written of the new phenomenon; the politicians had not refrained from commendation. His Excellency the Governor made our path plain by calling a meeting in Government House, where the following resolution was pa.s.sed:

"That this meeting, representing the princ.i.p.al merchants and traders carrying on the fisheries, especially on the Labrador coast, and others interested in the welfare of this colony, desires to tender its warmest thanks to the directors of the Deep-Sea Mission for sending their hospital ship Albert to visit the settlement on the Labrador coast.

"Much of our fishing industry is carried on in regions beyond the ordinary reach of medical aid, or of charity, and it is with the deepest sense of grat.i.tude that this meeting learns of the amount of medical and surgical work done....

"This meeting also desires to express the hope that the directors may see their way to continue the work thus begun, and should they do so, they may be a.s.sured of the earnest cooperation of all cla.s.ses of this community."

When at last we said good-bye on our homeward voyage, our cabins were loaded with generous souvenirs for the journey, and no king on his throne was happier than every man of the crew of the good ship Albert.

Our report to the Council in London, followed by the resolution sent by the Newfoundland Committee, induced the Society to repeat the experiment on a larger scale the following spring. Thus, with two young doctors, Elliott Curwen of Cambridge and Arthur Bobardt from Australia, and two nurses, Miss Cawardine and Miss Williams, we again set out the following June.

The voyage was uneventful except that I was nearly left behind in mid-Atlantic. While playing cricket on deck our last ball went over the side, and I after it, shouting to the helmsman to tack back. This he did, but I failed to cut him off the first time, as he got a bit rattled. However, we rescued the ball.

We had chosen two islands two hundred miles apart for cottage hospitals, one at Battle Harbour, on the north side of the entrance of the St. Lawrence (Straits of Belle Isle), and the other at Indian Harbour, out in the Atlantic at the mouth of the great Hamilton Inlet.

Both places were the centres of large fisheries, and were the "bring-ups" for numberless schooners of the Labrador fleet on their way North and South. The first, a building already half finished, was donated by a local fishery firm by the name of Baine, Johnston and Company. This was quickly made habitable, and patients were admitted under Dr. Bobardt's care. The second building, a.s.sembled at St.

John's, was shipped by the donors, who were the owners of the Indian Harbour fishery, Job Brothers and Company. Owing to difficulties in landing, this building was not completed and ready for use until the following year, so Dr. Curwen took charge of the hospital ship Albert, and I cruised as far north as Okkak (lat. 57) in the Princess May, a midget steam launch, eight feet wide, with a cook and an engineer. As there was no coal obtainable in the North, we used wood, and her fire-box being small the amount of cutting entailed left a permanent impression on our biceps.

A friend from Ireland had presented this little boat, which I found lying up on the Chester Race-Course, near our home on the Sands of Dee. We had repaired her and steamed her through the ca.n.a.l into the Mersey, where, somewhat to our humiliation, she had been slung up onto the deck of an Allan liner for her trans-Atlantic pa.s.sage, as if she were nothing but an extra hand satchel. Nor was our pride restored when on her arrival it was found that her funnel was missing among the general baggage in the hold. We had to wait in St. John's for a new one before starting on our trip North. The close of the voyage proved a fitting corollary. In crossing the Straits of Belle Isle, the last boat to leave the Labrador, we ran short of fuel, and had to burn our cabin-top to make the French sh.o.r.e, having also lost our compa.s.s overboard. Here we delayed repairing and refitting so long that the authorities in St. John's became alarmed and despatched their mail steamer in search of us. I still remember my astonishment, when, on boarding the steamer, the lively skipper, a very tender-hearted father of a family, threw both arms around me with a mighty hug and exclaimed, "Thank G.o.d, we all thought you were gone. A schooner picked up your flagpole at sea." Poor fellow, he was a fine Christian seaman, but only a year or two later he perished with his large steamer while I still rove this rugged coast.

That summer we visited the stations of the Moravian Brethren, who were kindness personified to us. Their stations, five in number, dated back over a hundred and thirty years, yet they had never had a doctor among them. It would scarcely be modest for me to protest that they were the worse off for that circ.u.mstance. Each station was well armed with h.o.m.oeopathic pills, and at least those do no harm; while one old German house-father had really performed with complete success craniotomy and delivery of a child _en morcellement_, in the case of a colleague's wife. During our stay they gave us plenty of work among their Eskimos, and were good enough to report most favourably of our work to their home Committee.

As there was no chart of any use for the coast north of Hopedale, few if any corrections having been made in the topographic efforts of the long late Captain Cook, of around-the-world reputation, one of the Brethren, Mr. Christopher Schmidt, joined the Princess May to help me find their northern stations among the plethora of islands which fringe the coast in that vicinity. Never in my life had I expected any journey half so wonderful. We travelled through endless calm fjords, runs, tickles, bays, and straits without ever seeing the open sea, and with hardly a ripple on the surface. We pa.s.sed high mountains and lofty cliffs, crossed the mouths of large rivers, left groves of spruce and fir and larches on both sides of us, and saw endless birds, among them the Canada goose, eider duck, surf scoters, and many commoner sea-fowl. As it was both impossible and dangerous to proceed after dark, when no longer able to run we would go ash.o.r.e and gather specimens of the abundant and beautiful sub-arctic flora, and occasionally capture a bird or a dish of trout to help out our diminutive larder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ESKIMO WOMAN AND BABY]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ESKIMO MAN]

Among the Eskimos I found a great deal of tuberculosis and much eye trouble. Around the Moravian Mission stations wooden houses had largely replaced the former "tubiks," or skin tents, which were moved as occasion required and so provided for sanitation. These wooden huts were undrained, dark and dirty to a remarkable degree. No water supply was provided, and the s.p.a.ces between the houses were simply indescribable garbage heaps, presided over by innumerable dogs. The average life was very short and infant mortality high. The best for which we could hope in the way of morals among these people was that a natural unmorality was some offset to the existing conditions. The features of the native life which appealed most to us were the universal optimism, the laughing good-nature and contentment, and the Sunday cleanliness of the entire congregation which swarmed into the chapel service, a welcome respite from the perennial dirt of the week days. Moreover, nearly all had been taught to read and write in Eskimo, though there is no literature in that language to read, except such books as have been translated by the Moravian Brethren. At that time a strict policy of teaching no English had been adopted. Words lacking in the language, like "G.o.d," "love," etc., were subst.i.tuted by German words. Nearly every Eskimo counted "ein, zwei, drei." In one of my lectures, on returning to England, I mentioned that as the Eskimos had never seen a lamb or a sheep either alive or in a picture, the Moravians, in order to offer them an intelligible and appealing simile, had most wisely subst.i.tuted the kotik, or white seal, for the phrase "the Lamb of G.o.d." One old lady in my audience must have felt that the good Brethren were tampering unjustifiably with Holy Writ, for the following summer, from the barrels of clothing sent out to the Labrador, was extracted a dirty, distorted, and much-mangled and wholly sorry-looking woolly toy lamb. Its _raison d'etre_ was a mystery until we read the legend carefully pinned to one dislocated leg, "Sent in order that the heathen may know better."

Their love for music and ability to do part-playing and singing also greatly impressed us, and we spent many evenings enjoying their bra.s.s bands and their Easter and Christmas carols. We made some records of these on our Edison phonograph, and they were overpowered with joy when they heard their own voices coming back to them from the machine.

The magic lantern also proved exceedingly popular, and several tried to touch the pictures and see if they could not hold them. We were also able to show some hastily made lantern slides of themselves, and I shall never forget their joyful excitement. The following season, in giving them some lantern views, we chanced to show a slide of an old Eskimo woman who had died during the winter. The subsequent commotion caused among the "little people" was unintelligible to us until one of the Moravian Brethren explained that they thought her spirit had taken visible form and returned to her own haunts.

I happened to be in the gardens at Nain when a northerly air made it feel chilly and the thermometer stood only a little above freezing. A troop of Eskimo women came out to cover up the potatoes. Every row of potatoes is covered with arched sticks and long strips of canvas along them. A huge roll of sacking is kept near each row and the whole is drawn over and the potatoes are tucked in bed for the night. I could not resist the temptation to lift the bedclothes and shake hands and say good-night to one of the nearest plants, whereat the merry little people went off into convulsions of laughter.

At Hopedale there was a large Danish ship with over six hundred tons of cargo for the new Moravian buildings. The Brethren do not build as we are doing from coast material. In order to save time and also to have more substantial buildings, they are cut out and built in Germany, photographed, and each piece marked. Then they are taken to pieces, shipped, and sent out here for erection.

Some years ago in Germany, when the Socialists were wearing beards and mustaches, all respectable people used to shave. Therefore the missionaries being Germans insisted on the Eskimos shaving as they did. The result is that at one store at least a stock of ancient razors are left on hand, for now neither missionary nor Eskimo shaves in the inhospitable climate of this country. A small stock of these razors was, therefore, left on my account in some graves from which one or two Eskimos were good enough to go and get us a few ancient stone implements. It is a marvellous thing how superst.i.tion still clings around the very best of native Christian communities.

The Moravian Mission is a trading mission. This trading policy in some aspects is in its favour. It is unquestionably part of a message of real love to a brother to put within his reach at reasonable rates those adjuncts of civilized life that help to make less onerous his hard lot. Trade, however, is always a difficult form of charity, and the barter system, common to this coast, being in vogue at the Moravian Mission stations also, practically every Eskimo was in debt to them. In reality this caused a vicious circle, for it encouraged directly the outstanding fault of the Eskimo, his readiness to leave the morrow to care for itself so long as he does not starve to-day.

Like a race of children, they need the stimulus of necessity to make them get out and do their best while the opportunity exists. In the past twenty-six years I have made many voyages to one and another of the stations of the Brethren, and have learned to love them all very sincerely as individuals, though their mission policies are their own and not mine.

I remember once in Nain the slob ice had already made ballicaters and the biting cold of winter so far north had set in with all its vigour.

There was a heavy sea and a gale of wind. One of two boats which had been out all day had not come in. The sea was so rough and the wind so strong that the occupants of the first boat could not face it, and so had run in under the land and walked all the way round, towing their boat by a long line from the sh.o.r.e. Night came on and the second boat had not appeared. Next morning the Nain folk knew that some accident must have happened. Some men reported that the evening before they had seen through a gla.s.s the boat trying to beat against the storm, and then disappear. The Eskimos gathered together to see what could be done and then decided that it was kismet--and went their way. The following evening a tiny light was seen on the far sh.o.r.e of the bay--some one must be alive there. There was no food or shelter there, and it was obvious that help was needed. The gale was still blowing in fury and the sea was as rough as ever, and Eskimos and missionaries decided that in their unseaworthy boats they could do nothing. There was one dissentient voice--Brother Schmidt; and he went and rescued them. One was nearly spent. When their boat had capsized, one man, a woman, and a lad had been drowned, but two men had succeeded in getting into their kajaks and floated off when the disaster happened.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ESKIMO GIRLS]

With October came the necessity for returning South, and the long dark nights spent at the little fishing stations as we journeyed from place to place proved all too short. The gatherings for lantern meetings, for simple services, for spinning yarns, together with medicine and such surgery as we could accomplish under the circ.u.mstances, made every moment busy and enjoyable. One outstanding feature, however, everywhere impressed an Englishman--the absolute necessity for some standard medium of exchange. Till one has seen the truck system at work, its evil effects in enslaving and demoralizing the poor are impossible to realize.

All the length and breadth of the coast, the poorer people would show me their "settling up" as they called their account, though many never got as far as having any "settling up" given them--so they lived and died in debt to their merchant. They never knew the independence of a dollar in their pockets and the consequent incentive and value of thrift.

It was incredible to me that even large concerns like the Hudson Bay Company would not pay in cash for valuable furs, and that so many dealers in the necessities of life should be still able to hold free men in economic bondage. It seemed a veritable chapter from "Through the Looking Gla.s.s," to hear the "grocer" and "haberdasher" talking of "my people," meaning their patrons, and holding over them the whip of refusal to sell them necessities in their hour of need if at any time they dealt with outsiders, however much to their advantage such a course might be.

This fact was first impressed upon me in an odd way. Early in the summer an Eskimo had come aboard the hospital ship with a bear skin and a few other furs to sell. We had not only been delighted with the chance to buy them, but had spread them all around the cabin and taken a picture of him in the middle. Later in the season, while showing my photograph alb.u.m to a trader, he had suddenly remarked, "Why, what's ---- doing here?"

"Selling me some beautiful furs," I replied.

"Oh! was he?" said the man. "I'll make him sing for selling the furs for which I supplied him."

It was no salve to his fretfulness when I a.s.sured him that I had paid in good English gold, and that his "dealer" would be as honest with the money as the system had made him. But the trader knew that the truck system creates slippery, tricky men; and the fisherman openly declares war on the merchant, making the most of his few opportunities to outwit his opponent.

A few years later a man brought a silver fox skin aboard my ship, just such a one as I had been requested by an English lady to secure for her. As fulfilling such a request would involve me in hostilities (which, however, I do not think were useless), I asked the man, who was wretchedly poor, if he owed the skin to the trader.

"I am in debt," he replied, "but they will only allow me eight dollars off my account for this skin, and I want to buy some food."

"Very well," I answered. "If you will promise to go at once and pay eight dollars off your debt, I will give you eight gold sovereigns for this skin."

To this he agreed, and faithfully carried out the agreement--while the English lady scored a bargain, and I a very black mark in the books of my friend the trader.

On another occasion my little steamer had temporarily broken down, and to save time I had journeyed on in the jolly-boat, leaving the cook to steer the vessel after me. I wanted to visit a very poor family, one of whose eight children I had taken to hospital for bone tuberculosis the previous year, and to whom the Mission had made a liberal grant of warm clothing. As the steamer had not come along by night, I had to sleep in the tiny one-roomed shack which served as a home. True, since it stood on the edge of the forest, there was little excuse that it was no larger; but the father, a most excellent, honest, and faithful worker, was obviously discouraged. He had not nearly enough proper food for his family; clothing was even more at a discount; tools with which to work were almost as lacking as in a cave man's dwelling; the whole family was going to pieces from sheer discouragement. The previous winter on the opposite bank of the same river, called Big River, a neighbour had in desperation sent his wife and eldest boy out of the house, killed his young family, and then shot himself.

When night came five of the children huddled together for warmth in one bed, and the parents and balance of the family in the other. I slept on the floor near the door in my sleeping-bag, with my nose glued to the crack to get a breath of G.o.d's cold air, in spite of the need for warmth--for not a blanket did the house possess. When I asked, a little hurt, where were the blankets which we had sent last year, the mother somewhat indignantly pointed to various trousers and coats which betrayed their final resting-place, and remarked, "If you'se had five lads all trying to get under one covering to onct, Doctor, you'd soon know what would happen to that blanket."

Early in the morning I made a boiling of cocoa, and took the two elder boys out for a seal hunt while waiting for my steamer. I was just in time to see one boy carefully upset his mug of cocoa, when he thought I was not looking, and replace it with cold spring water. "I 'lows I'se not accustomed to no sweetness" was his simple explanation. It was raw and damp as we rowed into the estuary at sunrise in search of the seals. I was chilly even in a well-lined leather coat. But the two shock-headed boys, clad in ancient cotton shirts, and with what had once been only cotton overall jackets, were as jolly as crickets, and apparently almost unduly warm. The Labrador has taught me one truth, which as a physician I never forget, that is, coddling is the terrible menace of civilization, and "to endure hardness" is the best preparation for a "good soldier." On leaving, I promised to send to those boys, whose contentment and cheerfulness greatly endeared them to me, a dozen good fox traps in order to give them a chance for the coming winter. Such a gift as those old iron rat traps seemed in their eyes! When at last they arrived, and were really their own possessions, no prince could have been prouder than they. The next summer as I steamed North, we called in at D---- B----'s house. The same famine in the land seemed to prevail; the same lack of apparently everything which I should have wanted. But the old infective smile was still presented with an almost religious ceremonial, and my friend produced from his box a real silver fox skin. "I kept it for you'se, Doctor," he said, "though us hadn't ne'er a bit in t' house. I know'd you'd do better 'n we with he."

I promised to try, and on my way called in at some northern islands where my friend, Captain Bartlett, father of the celebrated "Captain Bob" of North Pole fame, carried on a summer trade and fishery. He himself was a great seal and cod fisherman, and a man known for his generous sympathy for others.

"Do your best for me, Captain Will," I asked as I handed over the skin--and on coming South I found a complete winter diet laid out for me to take to D---- B----'s little house. It was a veritable full load for the small carrying capacity of my little craft.

When we arrived at the house on the promontory, however, it was locked up and the family gone. They were off fishing on the outer islands, so all we could do was to break in the door, pile up the things inside, bar it up again, affixing a notice warning off bears, dogs, and all poachers, and advising d.i.c.k that it was the price of his pelt. In the note we also told him to put all the fur he caught the following winter in a barrel and "sit on it" till we came along, if he wanted a chance to get ahead. This he did almost literally. We ourselves took his barrel to the nearest cash buyer, and ordered for him goods for cash in St. John's to the full amount realized. The fur brought more than his needs, and he was able to help out neighbours by reselling at cash prices. This he did till the day of his death, when he left me, as his executor, with a couple of hundred good dollars in cash to divide among his children.

It was experiments like this which led me in later years to start the small cooperative distributive stores, in spite of the knowledge of the opposition and criticism it would involve. How can one preach the gospel of love to a hungry people by sermons, or a gospel of healing to underfed children by pills, while one feels that practical teaching in home economics is what one would most wish if in their position?

The more broad-minded critics themselves privately acknowledged this to me. One day a Northern furrier, an excellent and more intelligent man than ordinary, came to me as a magistrate to insist that a trading company keep its bargain by paying him in cash for a valuable fox skin. They were trying to compel him to take flour and supplies from them at prices far in excess of those at which he could purchase the goods in St. John's, _via_ the mail steamer.

When asked to act as a justice of the peace for the Colony, I had thought it my duty to accept the responsibility. Already it had led me into a good deal of trouble. But that I should be forced to seize the large store of a company, and threaten an auction of goods for payment, without even a policeman to back me up, had never entered my mind. It was, however, exactly what I now felt called upon to do. To my intense surprise and satisfaction the trader immediately turned round and said: "You are quite right. The money shall be paid at once.

The truck system is a mistaken policy, and loses us many customers."

It was Sat.u.r.day night. We had decided to have a service for the fishermen the next day, but had no place in which to gather.

Therefore, after we had settled the business I took my pluck in my hands, and said:

"It's Sunday to-morrow. Would you lend us your big room for prayers in the morning?"

"Why, certainly," he replied; and he was present himself and sang as heartily as any man in the meeting. Nor did he lose a good customer on account of his open-mindedness.