CHAPTER XI

_OUR VOYAGE CONTINUED_

On our arrival in a harbour our method was, as last year, to hoist our blue flag to announce our arrival, to then visit any seriously sick I could hear of, after which we had evening service in a shed, stage, or house, and then, last of all, any could come for advice or assistance. To every family or vessel a good bundle of reading was given if they wished it, all the literature being selected at home as healthy and suitable for fishermen. If any wanted God’s Word, that, too, was to be had for asking for it; while a register was kept of all the poor, describing as accurately as we could the nature of the needs and deserts of each case, in order that when, at the end of the year, we divided up the warm clothing we had brought out, it should fall into the hands of the most deserving. In this way also we became possessed of a valuable record for future reference. Thus in one house when visiting a case, I found my patient to be the mother of a large family. The poor thing, who, with self-sacrificing courage, had refused to believe herself ill till she could get about no more, was lying on one single wood form in a bare and dirty room, her head close to an old cracked stove, behind which a crowd of shivering urchins were huddled together. The sickness was acute bronchitis and pleurisy, made worse by little clothing and less food. A haggard man meanwhile was pacing up and down, nursing a screaming and hungry baby. I pulled the children out from behind the stove for inspection; but their rags so failed to cover them, that each hastened back at once after the ordeal to the seclusion and warmth behind the old stove. The complete attire of one bony little mite was an old trouser leg, into which he was packed like a sack. All were alike barefooted.

Staying here over Sunday, I was the guest of a Labrador fisherman, rather better off than the majority, an erect, grey-haired man of about forty-five, standing some six feet two inches. His cottage, built with his own hands, was a pattern of neatness and cleanliness, but the bad seasons were compelling even him to desert the harbour, and try squatting farther along the coast. He was still the fortunate possessor, however, of a cod-trap (value about £80), by means of which he still hoped to end the year out of debt. He was the class leader for the neighbourhood, and had many years been standing on the Lord’s side, and, indeed, after the Wesleyan Missionary for the Straits, he was the backbone of the religious life of the place. Such an one, where every detail of one’s life is known, must indeed be an “Epistle read of all men,” of which fact he was well aware, as also, that his neighbours, while unable or undesirous to read God’s word for themselves, measured the claims of God on their own life very largely by his actions. This we found to obtain more or less along the whole coast, especially among these scattered communities, where little or no provision is made for their spiritual needs. When therefore Sunday morning broke, and a large iceberg was noticed drifting towards his cod-trap, threatening to deprive him of his means of earning his daily bread, he at first decided to go and spend the day working to save his net. But soon he came back, saying, “I’ve decided not to go, doctor; there are those in this harbour that only want a pretext for working on the Lord’s Day, and I’ll not be the one to give it them.” As we climbed the hill to the little wooden chapel I noticed him standing and greeting the people as they came along, according to his custom, as if forgetful of the fact that the mass of ice was at that moment probably robbing him of his all. We had three _such_ services that day; the Wesleyan missionary, the Rev. John Sidey, was present, and more than one of our hearts were full at the evidence of the reality of God’s Spirit among this out-of-the-way, isolated people. Long before sunrise on Monday, indeed immediately after midnight, my good host was away in his boat after the wreck of his cod-trap, and by breakfast had returned, his face radiant with the same happy smile he always has, saying, “I _knew_ it would be all right, doctor. The worst of the ice passed outside it; a few hours’ work, and we shall get it all right again.”

[Illustration: Interior of Indian Harbour Hospital.]

In the Straits of Belle Isle we visited all the stations to Old Ford Island, about 100 miles from the entrance. At L’Anse au Loup, Blanc Sablon (the boundary between Canada and Newfoundland), and at Bonne Esperance, we found large stations for fishing, with numbers of men hard at work at the caplin school. We had quite a number of surgical and medical cases, including two of true (sailor’s) scurvy from want of proper food. At one place we were called to operate on the back of a French settler, at another on the arm of a poor Newfoundland schooner-man. In this last case I had the assistance of a Roman Catholic priest who was journeying along the coast.

While visiting in Forteau Bay we passed close to the wreck of H.M.S. _Lily_. We found here that a Beaver line steamer, the S.S. _Lake Nepigon_, had recently run ashore. While journeying down the straits she had struck on a whale-back iceberg, and was sinking head foremost, like the _Victoria_, when her captain succeeded in grounding her on one of the few bits of sand for miles. Her screw and rudder were practically out of water when she took the bottom, with her bows in 27 feet. The doctor aboard had spent three days on shore near, and had operated on one cancer of the lip and on an old compound dislocation of the wrist in a young girl. These came to us to have the stitches removed.

While returning from visiting a patient at Greenly Island in thick fog, we were unfortunate enough to run the _Princess May_ ashore. It was as dark as pitch at the time, and we had burnt all our flares out while threading our way through a quantity of schooners at anchor. Two men on the bows of the boat, after a long pause to search for some guidance, had just given the word “all right ahead,” when we ran up on a flat-topped rock, and found that high, almost perpendicular, cliffs were only a few yards ahead. Throwing out our dingey, and removing all superfluous weight from the bows, we succeeded shortly in getting off; and guided by the stentorian shouts of some men from a schooner, alternating with their fog-horn, we found our way alongside and made fast to her. As we were too many even to lie down on the launch I went aboard the schooner, the hospitable skipper of which insisted on my turning into his bunk. He was only just back, apparently, with a load of fish from his traps, and hearing the echo of our voices from the cliffs had guessed something was wrong. He added, “there is fish to be had now, and so I don’t turn in at all myself”; and sure enough, after a shake down and some supper he and his crew disappeared into the foggy darkness for a fresh load from the trap, while sleep reigned supreme on board. He turned out to be a green-fish catcher, who was “making” his fish on his vessel.

Further along the straits, at Bonne Esperance, we met with a more serious mishap, for while returning from a visit up Salmon River our propeller refused to rotate, and we had to depend on our sail. The kindness of the first engineer of a sealing steamer (Mr. William Crossman) anchored in the harbour set us all right again, however, for he made us a complete set of new steel screws for our piston-top—our own had given out, and we neither had means of making new ones, or replacing them, in Labrador. After one or two other similar mishaps, but having treated some one hundred and fifty patients, and having received much kindness and a warm welcome wherever we had been, we reached Battle Hospital again on the 29th of July. We brought a dying fisherman the last 80 miles with us, which necessitated his sleeping three nights in my cabin. He was still in the prime of life, but pneumonia developed into gangrene of the lungs, and he subsequently died in Battle Harbour Hospital.

The Sunday passed pleasantly and rapidly among the people here. After evening service, held by the schoolmaster in the little church, we had a good “fishermen’s meeting.” Dr. Bobardt was away all day visiting sick people on a neighbouring island, and holding service among them. No patients were yet allowed in hospital, though it now only remained to cover the floors and get the stores in. Sister Carwardine had therefore arranged for the nursing of one poor woman, on whom an operation had been necessary, in a room of a cottage near at hand.

As the mail steamer was shortly expected, and would certainly bring patients for the hospital, the following day was spent by all hands in rendering the hospital inhabitable; and by evening our first patient was comfortably located in a room on the ground floor, while the sister spent her first night in hospital in an arm-chair.

Next day, before leaving for the north, Dr. Bobardt again being away visiting, I was called on to bury a poor fellow, father of a family of five, who had died from consumption in a neighbouring cove. The burial-ground is a small plot at the bottom of a deep ravine on the seaboard side of the island. On each side rose barren rocky crags, behind was the bleak island top, while in front lay the great Atlantic, bearing on its heaving bosom, as far as the eye could see, countless mighty icebergs. As the sad procession wound along the defile, carrying in its rude wood covering what was so recently a living, hopeful human being; as they laid it in its last long resting-place amidst these cold and desolate surroundings, the craving for something beyond the grave burnt fiercely in every heart; while the joy of knowing of a Heavenly Father, who has given us victory even over the grave, was realized as a priceless possession which the world cannot give—no, nor sell either.

Our next object was to visit the coast up to Indian Harbour, calling for coal and a few supplies left for us half-way up by the _Albert_, at a place called Bateau. In making a narrow inlet called Francis Harbour, we found much difficulty in getting in; for after long searching for the entrance, it proved to be blocked with ice, and a circuitous method inside an island was unknown to us. However, once inside the warmth of our welcome made up for the suspense outside, and after service in the neat and commodious parlour of the agent’s (Mr. Penny) house, we had a _levée_ of sick visitors till midnight. We next entered a deep narrow cleft in a high mountain, running parallel with the sea, nowhere wider than a stone’s throw. It is very deep, and high hills of bright red rocks rise abruptly on both hands. On the outer side are perched houses and fishing stages. This is known as Venison Tickle. The agent (Mr. Hawker) received us most warmly, and being himself doctor, parson, planter, and all combined, took me round at once to the various sick and injured. One poor old fisherman, suffering from apoplectic paralysis, we sent to hospital at Battle, though we learnt from a schooner that already it was nearly full.

Landing on a low island as we passed north, we found the eider-duck nesting in considerable numbers, while in the little pools among the rocks were young ducks and young gulls in numbers. Of the latter we caught several for our stew-pot. We steamed thence fifteen miles to Boulter’s Rock Harbour by a long narrow channel inside two enormous islands, the passage being known as Squasho Run. Fog succeeded fog all along this part of the coast, and it was only by the help of volunteer local pilots we succeeded in finding many of the harbours.

One dark night, unable to find our way further, we dropped our anchor inside some outlying islands called Seal Islands. It seemed to us that we had hardly got straight and settled down for the night’s rest before we heard a boat bumping against our side. In such a lonely place, and in a thick drizzly fog at night, a superstitious person might well have started. Soon we heard the soft tread of a mocassin over the half-inch boarding which, covered with painted canvas, served us as a roof; then a bustling at the hatchway door, and soon the broad face of a half-breed Eskimo peered into the cabin. It appeared he had a very sick daughter at his hut on the island, near which no doctor ever went. He had heard of the _Princess May_ being about; and seeing our cabin lights shining as he chanced to pass in his boat homewards, he had come in search of assistance. Soon, swathed in oilskins, I was sitting in the stern of his boat, while he swiftly rowed away into the darkness. Landing, and following closely behind him over broken rock for some quarter mile, brought me to his cottage, which, in true Labrador fashion, was well filled with inhabitants. Among them I found two seriously ill, one a young man of eighteen, the other a young married woman of about thirty. On this poor woman it was necessary to operate on our way south in order to save life even for the time; but as we had no hospital open in winter, she had to be left in that crowded hut to the tender mercies of the most unskilled of nurses, and though any communication with the island has been impossible since, I fear she will not have survived the winter.[15]

[Footnote 15: 1895. She has perfectly recovered, in the most marvellous manner.—W. T. G.]

I was one day asked, a little further north, to visit a woman reported to have been ill in bed for three months, and who was living up a bay fully ten miles from any fishing station. At length, dropping our anchor off the spot indicated, which was the mouth of a large salmon river, we blew our whistle repeatedly to try and attract her husband’s attention. After some time a small boat put out with one man sculling in the stern. He seemed to approach warily, and the man piloting me took in the situation in a moment. As soon as the small boat was alongside, he greeted the oarsman with “It’s all up; come aboard and surrender quietly, or you will be shot down.” The condemning reply came back, “Indeed, sir, the river isn’t barred. It couldn’t be barred. No nets would hold across it. It never has been barred. I wouldn’t bar the river. You can come and see for yourself.” We got into his boat, and he started with us to the shore, when I asked him if the launch was safe at her anchorage, as darkness was coming on. The prompt reply was that she would be aground on rocks at low water, and that we had better steam across the inlet and anchor the other side, where it was soft and good holding ground, at which our engineer at once proceeded to get steam again. On landing, I asked for the sick woman, and was shown into the most miserable dark hovel I ever saw. By a wretched tin chimneyless lamp I examined my patient. She was lying clad in one old petticoat on a few sacks spread over a kind of built-up bunk. Her bodily ailments were fortunately not great, but as she told me, and I believe truthfully, having no clothes to get up in, she was obliged to stay where she was. Turning to go out, I stumbled over our boatman, who at once commenced most profuse apologies. It appears he was just off to destroy his “bar,” when my pilot had told him I was not an excise officer, and the _Princess May_ was not a gunboat. So he went off to tell the engineer the anchorage was good enough, I fear that is not the only barred salmon river in Labrador.

Further north we steamed up Sandwich Bay, and visited, among other places, Cartwright, now a Hudson Bay post, but founded about 1790 by an English trader of that name. Here again we had a serious case to deal with. A girl of fourteen had been ill with internal abscess for between two and three years. She was sent to hospital after a trifling operation, and remained there a month. When I returned south I found her well and happy, and she told me she was only sorry she could not live in hospital.

I was interested in examining at Cartwright a marble tomb, raised, as the inscription proclaimed, “to commemorate the piety and zeal of the founder of this colony.” Some humble lichens had, in the course of time, grown in between the slabs, and with irresistible power had forced them open, revealing to the prying eye within not the crumbling dust of the departed trader, but a mighty demijohn of rum, no doubt made mellow by long years of waiting. Alas! that there are those to-day whose memory would be most aptly treasured by such an epigram, whom in life, for their riches’ sake, a blinded world “delights to honour.”

We were now only two hands on the launch, the engineer and myself, for our steward had returned to Battle Hospital. We were therefore anxious to push ahead, and on August 10th we were glad to run into Indian Harbour, and again “bring to” alongside the _Albert_. We found to our sorrow that bad weather had prevented the landing of our hospital till a month after we had expected; and, though all available hands had been at work, it was found impossible to occupy it this season. We therefore decided, as soon as the shell was finished and all done that could be without cutting the chimneys, to board up the windows, store the property in it, and leave it for the winter under care of the nearest “Livyere.” Meanwhile Dr. Curwen and Nurse Williams would remain on the _Albert_, and use it as their hospital. This place is the centre of a very large number of stations, and they had already found ample scope for work. Just before we left in the _Princess May_, both doctor and sister were summoned over the island to treat a woman on whom a fish stage had fallen, while they already had in the ship’s hospital a young girl dying of consumption. The condition in which some of our patients were when first admitted was horrible; the condition of the women from the green-fish catchers especially; for with scarcely any privacy, and scarcely any opportunities for washing, it was not to be wondered at that vermin often abounded. The experience of both our nurses tallied in this respect, and a good wash, clean clothes, and a few days’ nursing always appeared to work marvels, even in apparently hopeless cases. When it became evident that this poor girl must die, she expressed her determination to go home by the first opportunity, that, if possible, she might reach her family in Newfoundland before the end came.

It was ten o’clock at night, and a blustering evening in Cape Webeck Harbour, when we next met the mail steamer going south. With much difficulty we got our poor patient into the boat, wrapped over and over in clean blankets; two of us in the stern sheets holding the large bundle in our arms, while Captain Trezise and his men rowed us down the harbour. Getting her up the steamer’s side was, however, a still less easy task, but was at last accomplished, and she was soon ensconced in a bunk in the saloon. Fortunately we had decided that Nurse Williams should now return to Battle Harbour to help Nurse Carwardine, for the hospital there was now overflowing into huts around, and our in-patients could be kept down to one or two. The nurse therefore was able to tend to her wants during the journey down. Eventually she reached St. Johns, where the Rev. Dr. Harvey most kindly met her, got her to the train and off to her home; so that her last wish was gratified, and she passed away peacefully among her loved ones.

At Cape Harrison we had a really hot Sunday, the flat cabin reflecting the sun so fiercely from the water that our very paint began to blister. Such a chance was not to be lost, and the fisherfolk gathered from far and near. One company, who journeyed from their schooner in King’s Arm, must have travelled some ten miles to us, rowing first to Sloop Harbour, then walking over the high cape, and then rowing again to Webeck Island; while even as we went to and fro from the meetings, which, owing to the numbers, we were obliged to hold on the shore, we heard sounds of hymns and praying from some of the mud huts we passed. It was a day indeed to be remembered. Our longest single expedition during this time had been to the Hudson Bay post of Rigoulette, up Hamilton inlet, some fifty miles from the entrance. Here we had several patients; and especially one little lad with a diseased bone in the leg—part of this it was necessary to remove. At the operation we were ably helped by the wife of the agent (Mr. Wilson), who proved herself a most able nurse and assistant. The difference of temperature up this long inlet is very marked, and we found the children of the house actually picnicing outside the hut in a canvas tent. [Illustration: The S.S. _Princess May_ in Merchantman Harbour.]