CHAPTER VI

_DO PEOPLE LIVE IN LABRADOR?_

Do people live in Labrador? There is a resident white population of some 5,000 at least, scattered along the south and east coasts. They call themselves “Livyeres.” North of these are Eskimos, and in the interior Indians, known locally as “Mountaineers,” but actually they are different branches of the old Algonquin race. The last returns were as follows:—

White population of St. Lawrence coast 4,411 White population of Atlantic coast 2,416 Eskimo on the coast 1,700 Indians of the interior 4,000 —————— Total 12,527 ——————

These Indians, who once held North America from the “Rockies” to the sea, have steadily decreased in numbers. As they live by hunting only, the extensive forest fires, and depletion of fur-bearing animals, have driven them further and further west. Whole encampments have been reported “found dead from starvation.” Only occasionally do they visit the coast, bringing furs with them to trade with the Hudson Bay Company. They never take to sea fishing.

The Eskimo, of Mongolian origin, at one time were as far south as Newfoundland. In 1780 a tribe 500 strong still dwelt along the Straits of Belle Isle. Now almost all are north of Hamilton inlet; of these I shall speak later.

Whence do the whites come? Some are said to be descendants of those who fled the old country in press-gang days. In 1780 we hear of a crew of convicts sent out there. Some are descendants of sailors wrecked on the coast, or of Newfoundland and other fishermen who have been left there. More come from those who have gone out in the service of the Hudson Bay Company, while some few have emigrated directly there. The largest settlement consists of about 100 persons, and with the people of neighbouring coves numbers about 350. It is here where the mission has built the first hospital ever known in Labrador. In May or June every year the coast is visited by from 20 to 25,000 fishermen, women and children. These arrive as soon as the ice is blown off the coast by westerly winds. Most are from Newfoundland, some from Canada, with occasional Americans buying fish. They come in every variety of vessel—small and large, good, bad and indifferent—mostly of the schooner type. They number about 1,000. Besides the crew, which varies from five to ten men, with one or two women, most Newfoundland vessels bring a number of people called “freighters.” These are landed at various harbours, where they have left mud huts and boats the previous year, and where they will fish all summer. The fish is “made” or cured in Labrador, and sent in large vessels to the Mediterranean, Brazilian, or English markets. Meanwhile, the schooner has gone further north in search of a “fare” of fish. If successful, the fish will be salted, and brought home “wet,” so that these vessels are called “green-fish catchers.” As they come south they call for their “freighters,” with their goods and chattels, who pay 25 cents per head per cwt. of fish caught in return for their passage. The overcrowding on some of these vessels returning is very great, and is made worse by the fact that every year more vessels go than return. Besides the cargo of fish, casks of oil, nets, boats, and general goods, perhaps thirty, forty, or fifty men and women will be crowded into these small vessels, at times with only room to lie down in the hold between the deck and the cargo. On one small schooner of nineteen tons we counted fifty people, thirty-four men and sixteen women. The women, many of whom have children with them, are often very bad sailors. As a rule, they are not allowed on deck except in port, and this voyage is a nightmare all summer to numbers. They are pillars of pluck, many of these women. They can handle an oar and sail a small boat with the best, and among them are “Grace Darlings” only wanting an opportunity. They work chiefly at cleaning fish and keeping the huts for the men, though some, I think very wrongly, form part of the crews of the green fish catchers. The Canadian schooners are larger—carry about eighteen men and no women. The people consider Labrador very healthy, which I attribute to their comparative immunity there from epidemic diseases. The damp mud huts, often filled with snow till the very day they go in, the entire absence of any sanitary provisions, combined always with either cold draughts or too little ventilation, have, without any doubt, an ill effect on the people, but more especially on the women, who occupy them.

[Illustration: Fields of Fish Drying—Emily Harbour.]

The fishermen are tall men, and broad to match, born to the sea, and are accustomed, from their training at the seal fishery on the ice, to be quick and active. No lighthouse, no buoy, no landmark aid navigation on the Labrador coast. The charts are old, bad, incorrect, incomplete and unreliable, while north of Hamilton inlet, _where nearly all the schooners go for green fish_, there is practically no chart at all, most of the surveying having been done by the keels and bilges of devoted fishing schooners. Streams of icebergs, floating all the summer to the southward before the polar current, render it always unwise to stay at sea at night. With sudden calms and baffling winds from high perpendicular cliffs, making a harbour without a tug is always hard enough; but here, in addition, the constant and dense fogs make it often impossible, without any kind of guide, even to find a harbour at all; for in places shoals and ledges run out twenty miles to seaward. Yet for all this shameful neglect on the part of the Newfoundland Government, the weak defence is constantly made, “Not many lives are lost.” That I know to be due solely to the consummate seamanship and daring perseverance of the fishermen. Among many good vessels, many are bad, and, worse still, are provided with but bad tackle and holding-gear. The latter is an absolute essential, with the liability that exists to sudden hurricanes, and I believe more vessels are lost in Labrador from this one cause than all others put together. Moreover many, as I have already pointed out, are greatly overcrowded. More than once we saw vessels drifting to destruction, and once, when holding on ourselves for all we were worth, we had the pleasure of saving a comrade by running him a coir hawser, and so holding him on the verge of the rocks after his own tackle had given out and the crew had received brief notice to quit through the boiling surf.

It must be remembered that Newfoundland, our oldest colony, exists solely by its fishery; that one-third of its entire revenue is now derived from this very Labrador fishery, that is some one-and-a-half million dollars, and that in no other way could this harvest be reaped. Moreover almost every man in Labrador may be called a fisherman, and yet nothing is done for all their returns. Here is another method of interpreting the value of the industry. It is said seventeen tons of fish contain the nutritive value of 50 head of cattle, or 300 sheep. Now the average yield for fifty years from the French and English Fisheries is 2,300,000 cwt., that is 338,235 cattle, or 2,029,410 sheep.

The summer Labrador settlements are on islands or outside headlands, and here both Newfoundlanders and “Livyeres” dwell, the latter retiring up the bays and inlets, to be nearer wood and game, when the former return to Newfoundland. There are about a dozen well recognised central stations in Labrador, where agents representing the various merchants’ firms are stationed to collect the fish from the fishermen dealing with their firm, and to ship it thence to market. These men have far better houses than the rest, generally also a store from which the general wants of their men are supplied. As a rule, advances are made of all needful appliances and food to some better known fishermen.

These men are known as “Planters,” and employ under them so many men and women on “share” or wages. Occasionally, also, the agent has some men of his own, working for settled wages, who may be made to fish for cod, to pack salmon, to load vessels, or do any work they are told. When seven men fish one trap or seine net, the total catch is divided into fourteen shares—seven for the planter and seven for the men. That is one share each; a few dollars on the hundred quintals being allowed the skipper of the “crew.” Or when a man fishes his own net with four men, I saw the value divided into twelve shares—four for the master, four for the trap, and one each for the men, so that each man gets every twelfth fish. When hand-lining begins, and two men have charge of each boat, every other fish belongs to the men, the owner taking two out of four. A girl’s wages are £6 to £7 currency for the season, and her keep. Each planter has his own hut, but his men often live together. The huts are of logs with the chinks filled with moss and covered with sods. Entrance is by a low doorway, and there is a small window placed low down to prevent escape of heat. Warmth and ventilation cannot co-exist in so small a space. A man a little over a fathom long once visited Sir Donald Smith, when an agent on that coast. To accommodate his legs at night a hole had to be cut in the wall, and a box lined with dogskin fixed up outside. I saw one day a fisherman moving house. The house was first wedged up on piles, then a rope was put round it, and, with the help of a few neighbours, it was dragged higher up the hill. Another house I saw had been dragged over the harbour on the ice “to be nearer the fishing ground.” An American stove, or more often an open fireplace (the smoke going out of a huge chimney like in an Irishman’s cabin), serves for warmth and cooking. The stove, anyhow, is a movable chattel, and accompanies its master to his winter hut in the fall. Clothes are so expensive and so scanty that every man is his own wardrobe, and he who puts his clothes in a drawer must himself go naked. Thus a block of furniture is obviated. Bunks are put up for the men or a partition boarded off, while the girls sleep in a “lean-to,” called a “bunk-house,” or have a part partitioned off, or hang an old curtain in front of their bunk in the smaller huts.

Some Newfoundland planters and agents provide boarded huts for their “crowd,” but in all the arrangements are much the same. The Livyeres’ families have all their separate huts. Each “crew” has a fish stage, alongside which the fish are brought in the boats. These stages are built out on piles driven into the mud. Long poles, known as “rounders,” are laid side by side across the tops of these, and form a kind of flooring. The whole is then roofed in with poles and sods, in order that fish-curing may proceed at night by costers’ lamps, or in bad weather. Up the middle of the stage runs a table for splitting the fish on. The green fish are hove up on to the stage with pitchforks, seized by a woman who cuts off the head—“the header,” and passed on to one who opens the throat—“the throater.” She passes it to a man—“the splitter.” He, with great dexterity, cuts out the backbone and flings the flesh into a tub of water for the “washer.” I have timed a man split thirteen fish in one minute. It takes the tyro nearer thirteen minutes to split one well. The offal is thrown through a hole in the floor into the sea below, where every variety of scavenger fish congregates. In Norway, and by Messrs. Munn of Newfoundland, the skins and bones are made into a splendid glue, while the rest of the offal is preserved for fish manure. The washed fish is next laid in pile and salted. The “salter” is also a skilled mechanic. It is easy to undersalt and easy to “saltburn,” or oversalt, whereby much valuable salt is wasted. This salt comes all the way from Cadiz by the same vessels that take the fish away. Next the fish is spread in the sun. A fine day is waited for, and all hands turn to. Many a slip exists between the cup and the lip, however. If the fish has lain too long, it will be sodden, and go grey or dun. If the sun is too hot, it will be sun-burnt. If rain comes, and it is wet and dry again, too often it will be injured. It must be turned and returned. At last it is gathered up into circular “piles,” back up, and tail to the centre. These piles are covered over with birch rinds, and a few stones placed on the top to keep the whole together till it is time to ship them away. They are weighed into the ship, two quintals at a time, a “culler” looking over them as they pass in and classifying them; and according to this classification they are paid for. The receipt handed to the fishermen runs thus:—

Received from..............

Large } Medium} Merchantable fish Small } Madeira Merchantable fish West India Merchantable fish Talqual Merchantable fish Inferior Merchantable fish Damp Merchantable fish Dun Merchantable fish Slimy Merchantable fish Labrador Merchantable fish And also ...... casks of ...... gallons of oil.

There is always a great race to get first to market, for the first cargo always fetches a higher price. One fish planter ships his own fish to England, and thus is able to get at times a better price than that offered in St. Johns. On the other hand, he runs the risks of the freight, insurance, etc.

No railway, public building, roads, drains, or such like things exist in Labrador, and every man is a fisherman first, a handy man after—boat or house-builder, blacksmith, cooper, curer, as the case may be. Only three harbours do I know where liquor is sold: in one of these two poor fellows were drowned through its influence last year. No jail or police exist on the coast. A small revenue schooner, with a justice of the peace on board, is responsible for maintaining the law and preventing smuggling. The people are, as a rule, law-abiding; but crimes, especially among the half-breeds and Eskimo, go unpunished. In one settlement a lay reader and school teacher are established; in another an aspirant to the Methodist ministry, while settlements up two long inlets enjoy similar privileges. These men are all doing excellent work, as is a Presbyterian student from Dalhousie University in the Straits of Belle Isle.

Most school work can be done in winter, for in summer only those too young to work can be spared; and if they are old enough to journey alone to and from the school, they are old enough to do something at the fishery. Only a small percentage of Livyeres can read or write. Every summer it is usual for a Roman Catholic priest, a Methodist minister, and an Anglican clergyman to visit as many stations as they can on the first 400 miles of coast. They are passed along in boats from place to place by the too willing people, who, irrespective of creed, extend their kindly hospitality to all alike. In places wood buildings have been put up voluntarily by the men in their spare time, for Sunday services, conducted usually by one of themselves. Our own gatherings, at times too large for the _Albert’s_ hold or these little buildings, were held in fish stores ashore, cleared for the purpose, or in the open air, one of the countless boulders serving for a natural rostrum. I have seen the same place serve in the morning for Church of England, in the afternoon for Wesleyan, in the evening for Salvation Army, and pretty much the same congregation attending each. I have known a Methodist meeting house on Sunday reconsecrated for Mass on Monday. This absence of conventionality, this socialism on a basis of kindly generosity, is most congenial to one from the old world.

Fresh meat and vegetables are alike hard to procure. No cow or horse exists. The domestic animal world is represented only by the inevitable dog; the vegetable by the stringy cabbage or struggling turnip, whose leaves alone attain to economic value. To prevent scurvy in winter, when fresh fish is not attainable, salt meat must be avoided, even if they can afford to buy it. The following recipe is invented with that end: “Dry the cod in the sun till it is so hard none can go bad. In winter powder this, rub it up with fresh seal oil, and add cranberries if you have any.” This dainty is known as “Pipsey.” These people neither need nor expect luxuries; sugar and milk are very rarely used—tinned milk being too expensive, molasses being cheaper than sugar, and also margarine than butter. White rabbits, white grouse and sea-birds help to eke out the winter’s diet.

But to be accurate, in two harbours I saw a pig, brought by the Newfoundlanders. When they arrived the dogs were banished to a desert island near. In one harbor we listened to much wailing. Two pigs had been isolated on an island near, the fishermen enjoying daily the bliss of anticipation. But alas! here the dogs proved equal to the occasion. An on-shore wind had brought them the joyful news, and that very morning the pigs disappeared, only a few blood-stained bristles remaining to tell the story of the crime. In one harbour a planter had brought a sheep, but its isolation had so developed its affection for its owner that it followed him everywhere, and he could not make up his mind to kill it. Goats fare a little better: they have horns. Yet in one place three nights in succession a goat had been missed. A team of runaway dogs was roaming near, but only approached the houses under cover of night. All these animals are, however, the perquisites of affluence, and belong almost entirely to the planters from Newfoundland. Some few bring fowls, which eke out a perilous existence on suffrance of the dogs. At the Hudson Bay Company’s station of Rigolette, Mr. Wilson, the chief factor, told me that two of his dogs got into his well-enclosed yard, and in four minutes killed eight hens and tore four goats to pieces. Among all these people no resident doctor exists, nor is skilled aid of any kind to be obtained in case of need; for the few minutes in the summer that the mail steamer stays in any harbour, and the irregular times of her calls, gives the doctor on board no opportunity to render effective aid. When sickness falls on the people no one knows what it is, or how to treat it. Not knowing they are ill, men work on till a trifling ailment becomes a matter of life and death. A slight accident with no “first aid” at hand, permanently cripples a limb or destroys a valuable function, such as sight. Bleeding unchecked from a simple wound deprives a dependent family of the father and breadwinner. Many are the piteous stories I have learnt of such cases since first, in 1892, the Gospel Hospital-ship _Albert_ was sent out by warm hearts in Old England to their brothers and sisters in this “region beyond.”

After all this description of Labrador, do you ask, as I do, why do people stay here, when the fair farm lands of Canada are offered free to all? There is a story that a solitary old woman in the wilds of North America was one day visited by a gentleman from that “hub of the universe,” Boston city. She asked him, “Where do you live?” “Oh, hundreds of miles away—in Boston.” “How do you manage to live so far away?” was the reply. To begin with, every one has a lingering belief in his “ain countree.” The wild life to which these people are born has a certain charm to others besides themselves. Sailors they are born and bred. What else can they do? Some have been taken by the Canadian Government to the southern side of the Gulf of St. Lawrence—the Arcady of Longfellow—and yet have found eventually their way back. The fact remains—here is an increasing English-speaking colony.