Le Petit Nord Part 2

In the many weeks since I saw you--and it seems a lifetime--I have forgotten to mention one important item of news. Every properly appointed settlement along this coast has its cemetery. This place boasts two. With your predilection for epitaphs you would be content.

The prevailing mode appears to be clasped hands under a bristling crown; but all the same that sort of thing makes a more "cheerful"

graveyard than those gloomily beautiful monuments with their hopeless "[Greek: chairete]" that you remember in the museum at Athens. There is one here which reads:

Memory of John Hill who Died December 30th. 1889

Weep not, dear Parents, For your loss 'tis My etarnal gain May Christ you all take up the Cross that we Should meat again.

The spelling may not always be according to Webster, but the sentiments portray the love and hope of a G.o.d-fearing people unspoiled by the roughening touch of civilization.

I must to bed. Stupidly enough, this climate gives me insomnia.

Probably it is the mixture of the cold and the long twilight (I can read at 9.30), and the ridiculous habit of growing light again at about three in the morning. I am beginning to have a fellow feeling with the chickens of Norway, poor dears!

_August 9_

I want to violently controvert your disparaging remarks about this "insignificant little island." Do you realize that this same "insignificant little island" is four times bigger than Scotland, and that it has under its dominion a large section of Labrador? If, as the local people say, "G.o.d made the world in five days, made Labrador on the sixth, and spent the seventh throwing stones at it," then a goodly portion of those stones landed by mischance in St. Antoine. Indeed, Le Pet.i.t Nord and Labrador are so much alike in climate, people, and conditions that this part of the island is often designated locally as Labrador (never has it been my lot to see a more desolate, bleak, and barren spot). The traveller who described Newfoundland as a country composed chiefly of ponds with a little land to divide them from the sea, at least cannot be impeached for unveracity. In this northern part even that little is rendered almost impenetrable in the summer-time by the thick under-brush, known as "tuckamore," and the formidable swarms of mosquitoes and black flies. All the inhabitants live on the coast, and the interior is only travelled over in the winter with komatik and dogs.

No, I am _not_ living in the midst of Indians or Eskimos. Please be good enough to scatter this information broadcast, for each letter from England reveals the fear that I am in imminent danger of being scalped alive or buried in an igloo. There are a few scattered Eskimos on Le Pet.i.t Nord, but for the most part the inhabitants are whites and half-breeds. The Indians live almost entirely in the interior of Labrador and the Eskimos around the Moravian stations. I am living amongst the descendants of the fishermen of Dorset and Devon who came out about two hundred years ago and settled on this coast for the cod-fishery. Those who live in the south are comparatively well off, but many in the north are in great poverty and often on the verge of starvation.

When I look about me and see this poverty, the ignorance born of lack of opportunity, the suffering, the dirt, and degradation which are in so large a measure no fault of these poor folk, I am overwhelmed at the wealth of opportunities. Here at least every talent one has to offer counts for double what it would at home.

Thousands of fishermen come from the south each spring to take part in the summer's fishery. The Labrador "liveyeres," who remain on the coast all the year round, often have only little one-roomed huts made of wood and covered with sods. In the winter the northern people move up the bays and go "furring." Both the Indians and Eskimos are diminishing in numbers, and the former at the present time do not amount to more than three or four thousand persons--and of these the Montagnais tribe make up more than half. The Moravian missionaries have toiled untiringly amongst the Eskimos, and a.s.suredly not for any earthly reward. They go out as young men and practically spend their whole life on the coast, their wives being selected and sent out to them from home!

The work of this Mission is among the white settlers. In the Home we have only one pure Eskimo, a few half-breeds (Indians and Eskimo), and the remainder are of English descent. Almost all are from Labrador.

I often fancy that I must surely have slept the sleep of Rip Van Winkle. When he woke he found that the world had marched ahead a hundred years. With me the process is reversed. I am almost inclined to yield a grudging agreement to the transmigrationalists, and believe that I am re-living one of my former existences. For the part of the country in which I have awakened is a generation or so behind the world in which we live. There is no education worthy of the name, in many places no schools at all, and in others half-educated teachers eking out a miserable existence on a mere pittance. This is chiefly due to the antediluvian custom of dividing the Government educational grant on a denominational basis. A large proportion of the people can neither read nor write. There are no roads, no means of communication, no doctors or hospitals (save the Mission ones), no opportunities for improvement, no industrial work, practically no domestic animals, and on Labrador, taxation without representation! There is only one hospital provided by the Government for the whole of this island, and that one is at St. John's, which is inaccessible to these northern people for the greater part of the year. No provision whatever is made by the Government for hospitals for the Labrador. Again the only ones are those maintained by this Mission. Lack of education, lack of opportunity, and abundance of overwhelming poverty make up the lot of the majority of people in this north part of the country. Little wonder from their point of view, that one youth, returning to this land after seeing others, declared that the man he desired above all others to shoot was John Cabot, the discoverer of Newfoundland.

_August 15_

You complain that I have told you almost nothing about these children, and you want to know what they are like. And I wish you to know, so that you will stop sending dolls to Mary who is sixteen, and cakes of scented soap to David who hates above all else to be washed. I find these children very difficult in some ways; many of them are mentally deficient, but it appears that no provision is made by the Government for dealing with such cases, and so there is nothing to do but take them in or let them starve. Some are very wild and none have the slightest idea of obedience when they first arrive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOPSY'S AMBITION IS TO BECOME LIKE A FAT PIG]

One girl I have christened "Topsy," and I only wish you could see her when she is in one of her tantrums, which she has at frequent intervals. With her flashing black eyes, straight, jet-black hair, square, squat shoulders, she looks the very embodiment of the Evil One. She is twelve, but shows neither ability nor desire to learn.

Her habits are disgusting, and unless closely watched she will be found filling her pockets with the contents of the garbage pail--and this in spite of the fact that we are no longer dining off one herring. She says that her ambition in life is to become like a fat pig! Last night, when the children were safely tucked in bed and I had sat down to write to you, piercing shrieks were heard resounding through the stillness of the house. A tour of investigation revealed Topsy creeping from bed to bed in the darkness, pretending to cut the throats of the girls with a large carving-knife which she had stolen for this purpose. To-day Topsy is going around with her hands tied behind her back as a punishment, and in the hope that without the use of her hands we may have one day of peace at least. Poor Topsy, kindness and severity alike seem unavailing. She steals and lies with the greatest readiness, and one wonders what life holds in store for her.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOPSY WAS CREEPING FROM BED TO BED WITH THE CARVING-KNIFE]

We have just admitted three children, so we now number more than the three dozen. One little mite of five was found last winter in a Labrador hut, deserted, half-starved, and nearly frozen to death. She was kept by a kindly neighbour until the ice conditions allowed of her being brought here. The other two, brother and sister, were found, the girl clothed in a sack, her one and only garment, and the boy in bed, minus even that covering. This is the type of child who comes to us.

The doctor in charge has just paid me a visit. He says there is an epidemic of smallpox in the island, and he wants all the children to be vaccinated. The number of cases of smallpox this year in this "insignificant little island" is greater _pro rata_ than in any other country of the world. So two o'clock this afternoon is the time set apart for the ma.s.sacre of the innocents.

The laugh is against me! Two of our boys fell ill with a mysterious sickness, and tenderly and carefully were they nursed by me and fed with delicate portions from the king's table. I later learned with much chagrin that "chewing tobacco" (strictly forbidden) was the cause of this sudden onset. My sense of humour alone saved the situation for them!

_The Children's Home August 19_

In response to my frantic cables your box reached here safely, but it has not reached me. Picture if you can my amazed incredulity yesterday to see an exact replica of myself as I once was, walking on the dock.

I rubbed my eyes and stared. Yes, it _was_ my purple gown. My first impulse was to jerk it off the culprit, but I decided on more diplomatic tactics. A very little detective work elucidated the mystery. You had addressed the box in care of the Mission, thinking doubtless, in your far-sighted, Scotch way, that if sent to an individual, the said individual would have duty to pay. Knowing all too well the chronic state of my pocket-book, you antic.i.p.ated untoward complications. Now, none of the Mission staff pay duties. The contents of the box were mistaken for reinforcements for the charity clothing store, and to-day my purple chambray gown, "to memory dear," walks the street on another. _Sic transit_. I should add that one of the modernists of our harbour has chosen it. The old conservatives regard our collarless necks and abbreviated skirts with horror. What with the loss _en route_ of several necessary articles of apparel, and the discovery of this further depletion of my wardrobe, I regard the oncoming winter with some misgivings.

One of the crew on the Northern Light, _alias_ the Prophet, so-called because he is spirit brother to the Prophet of Doom, took a keen relish in my discomfiture, or I fancied he did. He it was who put the question in the doctor's Bible cla.s.s, "Is it religious to wear overalls to church?" The house officer had carefully saved a pair of clean khaki trousers to honour the Sunday services, but in the local judgment they were no fit garment for the Lord's house. Local judgment, I may add, was not so drastic in its strictures on boudoir caps. Some very pretty ones came to service on the heads of the choir, but the verdict was a unanimously favourable one. A nomadic _Ladies'

Home Journal_ was responsible for their origin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PROPHET OF DOOM]

"Out of the mouths of babes," etc. I have been trying to teach the little ones the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. Whilst undressing Solomon the other night I had occasion, or it seemed to me that I had, to speak somewhat sharply to one of the others. When I turned my attention again to Solomon, he enunciated solemnly in his baby tones, "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not love, I am become as sounding bra.s.s and a tinkling cymbal."

You complain most unjustly that I do not give a chronological account of events. I give you the incidents which punctuate my days, and as for the background, nothing could be simpler than to fill it in.

To divert your mind from such adverse criticism, let me tell you that there is a strong suspicion abroad that I am a devout adherent of the Roman Church. Rumours of this have been coming to me from time to time, but I determined to withhold the news till its source was less in question. Now I have it on the undeniable authority of the Prophet. I have candles, lighted ones, on the dining-room table at dinner. _Post hoc, propter hoc_--and what further proof is needed!

[Ill.u.s.tration: ANANIAS HAS BROKEN YET ANOTHER WINDOW]

Ananias has broken yet another window. When I questioned him as to when the deed had been committed, he replied politely, but mournfully, that he really could not tell me how many YEARS ago it was, as if I were seeking to unearth some long undiscovered crime.

_August 25_

The other day Topsy had the misfortune to fall out of bed and hit her two front teeth such a violent blow on the iron bar of the cot beside hers that bits of ivory flew about the dormitory. This necessitated a prompt matutinal visit to Dr. B., the dentist. As we waited our turn in the Convalescent Room, I overheard one patient-to-be remark to his neighbour, "They do be shockin' hard on us poor sailors. They says I've got to take a bath when I comes into hospital. Why, B'y, I hasn't had a bath since my mother washed me!"

The ethics of dentistry here are so mixed that one needs a Solomon to disentangle them. Mrs. "Uncle Life"--her husband is Uncle Eliphalet--recently had all her teeth pulled out, or, to be more accurate, all her remaining teeth. As the operation involved considerable time, labour, and novocaine, she was charged for the benefit of the hospital. When two shining sets, uppers and lowers, were ready for her, she was as pleased as a boy with his first jack-knife; but not so Uncle Life. He considered it a work of supererogation that not only must one pay to have the old teeth removed, but for the new ones to replace them.

Did I ever write you about our chambermaid's feet--the new one? Her name is Asenath, and she is so perfectly spherical that if you were to start her rolling down a plank she could no more stop than can those humpty-dumpty weighted dolls. 'Senath's temper is exemplary, and her intentions of the best; in fact, she will turn into a model maid.

But the process of turning is in progress at the moment. It began with our cook, a pattern of neatness and all the virtues, coming into my office and complaining, "One of us'll have to go, miss."

"What? Which?" I enquired, dazed by the abruptness of this decision, and wondering whether she were referring to me.

"This morning, miss, you know how hot it was? Well, 'Senath comes into the kitchen and says to me, 'Tryphena, I finds my feet something wonderful.' 'Wash them, and change your stockings,' I says. 'Wash them! Why, Tryphena, I'se feared to do that. I might get a chill as would strike in.'"

In a few well-chosen sentences I have explained to 'Senath the basic rules of hygiene and of this house regarding water and its uses. She has decided to stay and accept the inevitable weekly bath, but she warns me fairly that if she goes "into a decline," I must take the responsibility with her parents!

With your zeal for gardens, and your attachment to angle-worms--which you will recall I do not share--you would be interested in our efforts along these lines--the gardens, not the worms. In this climate a garden is a lottery, and in ten seasons to one a spiteful summer frost will fall upon the promising potatoes and kill the lot just as they are ripening. The Eskimos at the Moravian stations put their vegetal charges to bed each night with long covers over the rows. The other day, in an old journal about the country, I came upon this pa.s.sage, and it struck me "How history does repeat itself." It runs: "The soyle along the coast is not deep of earth, but bringing forth abundantly peason small, peason which our countrymen have sowen have come up faire, of which our Generall had a present acceptable for the rarenesse, being the first fruits coming up by art and industrie in that desolate and dishabited land." I can a.s.sure you that the sight of a "peason," however small, if it did not come out of a tin can, would be an acceptable offering to your friend. Even in summer we get no fresh vegetables or fruits with the exception of occasional lettuce or local berries. The epitome of this spot is a tin! In the same old journal Whitbourne goes on to say that "Nature had recompensed that only defect and incommoditie of some sharpe cold by many benefits--with incredible quant.i.tie and no less varietie of kindes of fish in the sea and fresh water, of trouts and salmons and other fish to us unknowen."

I have eaten fish (interspersed liberally with tinned stuff) and drunken fish and thought and spoken and dreamt fish ever since I arrived. But don't pity me for imaginary hardships. I like fish better than I do meat, and for that matter our winter meat supply is walking past my window this minute. He goes by the name of "Billy the Ox"; and I am informed that as soon as it begins to freeze, he is to be killed and frozen _in toto_, for the winter consumption of the staff, patients, and children. So our winter is not to consist of one long Friday.