A Labrador Doctor Part 9

It appears that a larger race of Eskimos called "Tunits," to whom the present race were slaves, used to be on this section of the coast. At Nakvak there are remains of them. In Hebron, the same year that we met the Indians at Davis Inlet, we saw Pomiuk's mother. Her name is Regina, and she is now married to Valentine, the king of the Eskimos there. I have an excellent photograph of a royal dinner party, a thing which I never possessed before. The king and queen and a solitary courtier are seated on the rocks, gnawing contentedly raw walrus bones--"ivik" they call it.

The Eskimos one year suffered very heavily from an epidemic of influenza--the germ doubtless imported by some schooner from the South. Like all primitive peoples, they had no immunity to the disease, and the suffering and mortality were very high. It was a pathetic sight as the lighter received its load of rude coffins from the wharf, with all the kindly little people gathered to tow them to their last resting-place in the shallow sand at the end of the inlet.

The ten coffins in one grave seemed more the sequence of a battle than of a summer sickness in Labrador. Certainly the hospital move on the part of the Moravians deserved every commendation; though I understand that at their little hospital in Okkak they have not always been able to have a qualified medical man in residence.

One old man, a patient on whose hip I had operated, came and insisted that I should examine the scars. Oddly enough during the operation the Eskimo, who was the only available person whom I had been able to find to hold the light, had fainted, and left me in darkness. I had previously had no idea that their sensibilities were so akin to ours.

At Napatuliarasok Island are some lovely specimens of blue and green and golden Labradorite, a striated feldspar with a glorious sheen. Nothing has ever really been done with this from a commercial point of view; moreover, the samples of gold-bearing quartz, of which such good hopes have been entertained, have so far been found wanting also. In my opinion this is merely due to lack of persevering investigation--for one cannot believe that this vast area of land can be utterly unremunerative.

On one of the old maps of Labrador this terse description is written by the cartographer: "Labrador was discovered by the English. There is nothing in it of any value"; and another historian enlarges on the theme in this fashion: "G.o.d made the world in five days, made Labrador on the sixth, and spent the seventh throwing stones at it." It is so near and yet so far, so large a section of the British Empire and yet so little known, and so romantic for its wild grandeur, and many fastnesses still untrodden by the foot of man! The polar current steals from the unknown North its ice treasures, and lends them with no n.i.g.g.ard hand to this seaboard. There is a never-wearying charm in these countless icebergs, so stately in size and so fantastic in shape and colouring.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A LABRADOR BURIAL]

The fauna and flora of the country are so varied and exquisite that one wonders why the world of science has so largely pa.s.sed us by.

Perhaps with the advent of hydroplanes, Labrador will come to its own among the countries of the world. Not only the ethnologist and botanist, but the archaeologist as well reaps a rich harvest for his labours here. Many relics of a recent stone age still exist. I have had brought to me stone saucepans, lamps, knives, arrow-heads, etc., taken from old graves. It is the Eskimo custom to entomb with the dead man all and every possession which he might want hereafter, the idea being that the spirit of the implement accompanies the man's spirit.

Relics of ancient whaling establishments, possibly early Basque, are found in plenty at one village, while even to-day the trapper there needing a runner for his komatik can always hook up a whale's jaw or rib from the mud of the harbour. Relics of rovers of the sea, who sought shelter on this uncharted coast with its million islands, are still to be found. A friend of mine was one day looking from his boat into the deep, narrow channel in front of his house, when he perceived some strange object in the mud. With help he raised it, and found a long bra.s.s "Long Tom" cannon, which now stands on the rocks at that place. Remains of the ancient French occupation should also be procurable near the seat of their deserted capital near Bradore.

My friend, Professor Reginald Daly, head of the Department of Geology at Harvard University, after having spent a summer with me on the coast, wrote as follows:

"We crossed the Straits of Belle Isle once more, homeward bound. Old Jacques Cartier, searching for an Eldorado, found Labrador, and in disgust called it the 'Land of Cain.' A century and a half afterward Lieutenant Roger Curtis wrote of it as a 'country formed of frightful mountains, and unfruitful valleys, a prodigious heap of barren rock'; and George Cartwright, in his gossipy journal, summed up his impressions after five and twenty years on the coast. He said, 'G.o.d created this country last of all, and threw together there the refuse of his materials as of no use to mankind.'

"We have learned at last the vital fact that Nature has set apart her own picture galleries where men may resort if for a time they would forget human contrivances. Such a wilderness is Labrador, a kind of mental and moral sanitarium. The beautiful is but the visible splendor of the true. The enjoyment of a visit to the coast may consist not alone in the impressions of the scenery; there may be added the deeper pleasure of reading out the history of n.o.ble landscapes, the sculptured monuments of elemental strife and revolutions of distant ages."

CHAPTER VIII

LECTURING AND CRUISING

We had now been coming for some two years to the coast, and the problem was a.s.suming 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 G.o.d 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 endors.e.m.e.nts. 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 att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sage between islands. We had polished our bra.s.s-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 ash.o.r.e 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 Rodd.i.c.k, 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 pa.s.sed 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 b.u.t.ter, and that "sweetness" (mola.s.ses) 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, anch.o.r.ed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN SUMMER]

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 ma.s.sive mountains of ice into a c.o.c.ked 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 pa.s.sing 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 gla.s.s 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 ash.o.r.e 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 pract.i.tioner; at times, thank G.o.d, 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 offsh.o.r.e, 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 pa.s.sed within an ace of the shoal. We expected every minute to see her dash on the top of it, and then she pa.s.sed out of sight once more, her light-hearted pa.s.sengers 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 att.i.tude 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 a.s.sets 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 anch.o.r.ed our beautiful Sir Donald in his care in a harbour off the long bay on the sh.o.r.es 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 a.s.sured 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."

CHAPTER IX