During the hours of waiting here she froze solidly into the ice, and had to be blasted out before she could commence her journey to the southward. She has taken the mails with her, and this letter must come to you by dog team—your first by that method.

In the early part of this summer three little orphan girls came to us from Mistaken Cove. Their names are Carmen, Selina, and Rachel, and their ages, ten, seven, and five. Their father has been dead for some years, and the mother recently died of tuberculosis. They did look such a pathetic little trio when they first arrived. I went down to the wharf to meet them, and three quaint little figures stepped from the hospital boat, with dresses almost to their feet. Carmen held the hands of her two sisters, and greeted me with "Are you the woman wot's going to look after we?" I assured her that I hoped to perform that function to the best of my ability, and then she confided to me that she had brought with her a box containing her mother's dresses and her mother's hair. I fancy the responsibility of the entire household must have rested on Carmen's tiny shoulders; she is like a little old woman, and even her voice is care-worn. I hunted up some dolls for the two younger kiddies, but had not the courage to offer one to their elder sister. She evidently felt that dolls were altogether too precious for common use, and carefully explained to her charges that they were only for Sundays! When I next went to the playroom it was to find the three little sisters sitting solemnly in a row on the locker with their dolls safely packed away beneath. I persuaded them that dolls were not too good for "human nature's daily food," and since then they have been supremely happy with their babies.

Carmen is so devoted to little Rachel that she cannot bear the thought of her being in trouble. Rachel is very human, and in the brief time she has been with us has had many falls from the paths of rectitude.

One day shortly after their arrival Rachel had been naughty, and I had taken her upstairs to explain to her the enormity of her offence, Carmen standing meanwhile at the bottom of the stairs wringing her hands. When Rachel reappeared and announced that she had not even been punished, Carmen was seen to give her a good slap on her own account, although evidently well pleased that no one else had dared to touch her child. Carmen is extremely religious, and her prayers at night are lengthy and devout. She starts off with the Lord's Prayer, the Apostles' Creed; several collects follow, and she concludes with a "Hail Mary!"

You have already made the acquaintance of Billy the Ox, the now dear departed, who constitutes our winter's frozen meat supply. Our allotted portion of him is hung in the balcony outside my window. Being on the second floor it was thought to be sanctuary from marauders. Last night I was awakened by an uneasy feeling of a presence entering my room. Starting up, I made out in the moonlight the great tawny form of one of our biggest dogs. He was in the balcony making so far futile leaps to secure a section of Billy. My shout discouraged him, and he jumped off the roof to the snow beneath. He had managed to scale the side of the house—but how? For some time I was at a loss to discover, till I remembered a ladder which had been placed perpendicularly against the wall on the other side. One of the double windows had broken loose in a recent storm of wind, and the barn man had had to go up and mend it. True to type he had left the ladder in statu quo. Up master dog had climbed straight into the air, along the slippery rungs of the ladder. When he reached the level of the tempting odour, he had alighted on the balcony roof. Then, pursuing the odour to its lair, he had discovered Billy, and me!

At breakfast I told my adventurette, and the story was instantly capped with others. Only one shall you have. The doctor was away on a travel last winter, and late one blustersome night came to a little village. He happened to have a very beautiful leader of which he was inordinately careful, so he asked his host for the night if he had a shed into which he could put Spider out of the weather. "Why, to be sure, just at the left of the door." It was dark and blowing, and the doctor went outside and thrust the beastie into the only building in sight. After breakfast he went with his host to get the dogs. When he started to open the door of the shelter in which Spider was incarcerated, the fisherman burst out in dismay, "You never put him in there? That's where I keeps my only sheep." At that second the dog appeared, a spherical and satisfied specimen. He had taken the stranger in—completely.



The cold is intense, and to combat it in these buildings of green lumber is a task worthy of Hercules. We make futile attempts to keep the pipes from freezing; but the north wind has a new trump each night. He squeezes in through every chink and cranny, and once inside the house goes whistling malignantly through the chilly rooms and corridors. We keep an oil stove burning in our bathroom at night with a kettle of water on it ready for our morning ablutions. To-day, when I went in to dress—one does not dress in one's bedroom, but waits in bed till the bathroom door's warning slam informs that the coast is clear—there was the stove still merrily burning, and there was the kettle of water on it—FROZEN.

Next month there is to be a sale in Nameless Cove, twelve miles to the westward of us. The doctor has asked me to attend. I accepted delightedly, as twenty-four hours free from fear of rats and frozen pipes draws me like a magnet. Moreover, who wouldn't be on edge if it were one's first dog drive!

I found Gabriel crying bitterly in bed the other night because he had in a fit of mischief thrown a stone at the Northern lights, which is regarded as an act of impiety by the Eskimo people. It was some time before I could pacify the child, or get him to believe that no dire results would follow his dreadful deed. But at length when "comforting time" was come for him, he consoled himself by supposing that Teacher must be "stronger than the devil."



December 27

I certainly was never born to be a teacher and it is something to discover one's limitations. For several Sundays now I have been labouring to instruct our little ones in the story of the birth of Jesus, and I have repeated the details again and again in order to impress them upon their wandering minds. Last Sunday I questioned them, and finally asked triumphantly, "Well, David, who was the Babe in the manger?" With a wild look round the room for inspiration, David enunciated with swelling pride, "Beulah, Teacher."

We had a lovely time on Christmas. The night before the children hung up their stockings, but it was midnight before I could get round to fill them, they were so excited and wakeful. I "hied me softly to my stilly couch," and was just dropping off into delicious slumber when at 1 A.M. the strains of musical instruments (which you had sent) were heard below. Then I appreciated to the full the sentiment of that poet who sang:

"Were children silent, we should half believe That joy were dead, its lamp would burn so low."

Later in the day we had our Christmas tree, when Topsy was overjoyed at receiving her first doll. There is something very sweet about the child in spite of all her wilful ways, and she is a real little mother to her doll.

We had a great dinner, as you may imagine. I overheard some of the little boys teasing Solomon, who is only three, to see if he would not forgo some particular choice morsel upon his plate, to which an emphatic "no" was always returned. Then by varying gradations of importance came the question, would he give it to Teacher? The answer not being considered satisfactory, Gabriel felt that the time had come for the supreme test, Would Solomon give it to God and the angels? The reply left so much to be desired that it is better unrecorded.

In our harbour lives a blind Frenchman, Francois Detier by name. He came here in his youth to escape conscription. The fisher people have travelled a long road since the old feuds which scarred the early history of Le Petit Nord, and Francois is a much-loved member of the community. Since the oncoming of the inoperable tumour, which little by little has deprived him of his sight, the neighbours vie with each other by helping him. One day a load of wood will find its way to his door. The next a few fresh "turr," a very "fishy" sea auk, are left ever so quietly inside his woodshed—and so it goes. It is a constant marvel to me that these people, who live so perilously near the margin of want, are always so eager to share up. Francois is sitting in our cellar as I write pulling nails from old boxes with my new patent nail-drawer. A moment ago I could not resist the temptation of putting the Marseillaise on the gramophone, and I went down to find him with tears rolling down his cheeks as he hummed,

"Allons, enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrive."

We've invented a new job for him; he is to "serve" our pipes with bandages. This means swathing them round and round, and finally adding an outer covering of newspaper, which has a much-vaunted reputation for keeping cold out.

Let me tell you the latest epic of the hospital pipes. Those to the bathroom run through the office. In the last blizzard they burst. The fire in the fireplace was a conflagration; the steam radiator was singing a credible song; and as the water trickled down the pipe from the little fissure, it froze solid before it was three inches on its way!

A friend sent me for Christmas a charming little poem. One verse runs:

"May nothing evil cross this door, And may ill fortune never pry About these Windows; may the roar And rains go by.

"Strengthened by faith, these rafters will Withstand the battering of the storm; This hearth, though all the world grow chill, Will keep us warm."

I am thinking of hanging the card opposite our pipes as a reminder of the "way they should go."



January 15

The journey to Nameless Cove Fair was all that I had hoped for and a little more thrown in to make weight. Clear and shining, with glittering white snow below and sparkling blue sky above, the day promised fair in spite of a mercury standing at ten below zero, and a number of komatiks from the Mission started merrily forth. All went well, and we reached Nameless Cove without adventure, but at sundown the wind rose. When we left the sale at ten o'clock to return to the house where I was to spend the night, we had to face the full fury of a living winter gale. I "caught" both my cheeks on the way, or in common parlance I froze them. All through that long tug we were cheered by the thought of a large jug of cream which we had placed on the stove to thaw when we left the house. Do you fancy that cream had thawed? Not a bit of it. The fire was doing its best, but old Boreas was holding our feast prisoner. It had not even begun to disintegrate around the edges. We cut lumps from the icy mass, dropped them into our cocoa (which we made by cooking it inside the stove and directly on top of the coals), hastily popped the mixture into our mouths before it should have a chance to freeze en route, and went promptly to bed. I draw a veil over that night. I drew everything else I could find over me in the course of it. A sadder and a wiser and a chillier woman I rose the morrow morn. Another member of the staff, who had slept in an adjoining house, froze his toe in bed.

When we reached home, and I left the komatik at the hospital door, I made out 'Senath dancing in an agitatedly aimless fashion on our platform. She was also waving her arms about. For a moment it crossed my mind that she had lost her modicum of wits, but as she was immediately joined by Tryphena, I gave up the theory as untenable, and continued to hasten up the hill to the Home. Our boiler had sprung, not one but many leaks, and the precious hot water destined for the cleansing of forty was flooding the already spotless kitchen floor. As it is the middle of the week I had not suspected this calamity, Sunday being the invariable day selected for all burst pipes, special rat banquets, broken noses, toothaches, skinned shins, and such misadventures. The problem now presenting itself for prompt solution is: 20 deg. below zero, a gale blowing from the northwest, twoscore small, unwashed orphans, and a burst boiler!





January 21

The oldest inhabitants, and all the others as well, claim that this is the most remarkable winter in thirty years. Not that one is deceived. I suspect them rather of making excuses for the consistently disconcerting climate of Britain's oldest colony.

All the same, literally the worst storm I ever experienced has been in progress for the last two days. It began in the morning by the falling of a few innocent flakes. Then the north wind decided to take a hand. All night and all day and all night again it shrieked around the house, driving incredible quantities of snow before it. Half an hour after it began, you could not see two yards in front of your face. The man who attends to the hospital heating-plant had to crawl on his hands and knees in order to reach his destination, taking exactly one hour to make the distance of two hundred yards.

At this institution it is the time-honoured custom to rise at five-thirty each morning, which custom, although doubtless good for our immortal souls, is distinctly trying to our too painfully mortal flesh. Added to which, in spite of all our efforts, our pipes are frozen, and in this country the ground does not thaw out completely until July or August, when we are making preparations for being frozen in again. Think of what this means for a household of over forty when every drop of water has to be hauled in barrels by our boys, and the superintendent has to stand over them to compel them to bring enough. Cleanliness at such a cost must surely be a long way towards godliness. I can now appreciate the story of the chaplain from a whaling ship who is said to have wandered into an encampment of the Eskimos. He told the people of heaven with all its glories, and it meant nothing to these children of the North; they were not interested in his story. But when he changed his theme and spoke of hell, with its everlasting fires which needed no replenishing, they cried, "Where is it? Tell us that we may go"; and big and little, they clambered over him, eager for details.



By morning every room on the windward side of our house looked like the inside of an igloo. The fine drift had silted in through each most minute cranny and crevice—even though we have double windows all over the building; and on the night in question we had decided that sufficient fresh air was entering in spite of us to permit our disobeying our self-imposed anti-tuberculosis regulations. The wind and snow are so persistent and so penetrating that the merest slit gives them entrance, and the accumulations of such a night make one fancy in the morning that the King of the Golden River has paid an infuriated visit to our part of the globe. When I went into the babies' dormitory every little bed was snowed under, and only the children's dark hair contrasted with the universal whiteness.

The second night I verily thought the house would come about our ears. The gale had increased in fury, the thermometer stood at thirty below, and I stayed up to be ready for emergencies. At midnight, thinking one room must surely be blown in, I carried the sleeping babes into another wing of the house. If for any reason we had had to leave the building that night, none of us could have lived to reach a place of safety. I wish you could have seen us the following morning. The snow had drifted in so that in places it was over six feet high. I ventured out and found that every exit but one from the Home was snowed up. We had therefore to dig ourselves out of the woodshed door and into the others from the outside. You make a dab with a shovel in the direction where you think you last saw the desired door before the storm, and trust the fates for results. Part of our roof has blown off and our chimney is in a tottering condition.

The greatest menace was the telegraph wires. The drifts in places were so huge that as one walked along, the wires were liable to trip one up. The doctor has just taken a picture of the dog team being fed from the third-story window of the hospital. They are clustered on the snow just outside and on a level with the bottom of the window. Some of the fishermen in their tiny cottages had to be dug out by kindly neighbours, as they were completely snowed under!

The storm will greatly delay travelling and it may be almost spring before this reaches you. It may interest you to know how my letters come to you in the winter-time, and then perhaps you will not wonder so much at the delays. The mail is carried across country to Mistaken Cove, on the west coast, and then by eight relays of couriers with their dog teams to Deerlake where the railway touches. It is a slow method of progress, and there are countless delays owing to the frequent blizzards. Often the mail men fail to make connections, and the letters may lie a week or a fortnight at some outlandish station. At one place the postmaster cannot even read, and the letters have to be marked with crosses at the previous stopping-places, to indicate the direction of their destination. Another postmaster, well known for his dishonesty, failed to get removed by the authorities because he was the only man in the place who could either read or write, and was therefore indispensable. Formerly all the letters had to go to St. John's, a day's extra journey, and be sorted there, sent back across the island to Run-by-Guess, eight hours across Cabot Straits, and then across the Atlantic to England. In this way a letter might take nearly three months to make the journey, and we are sometimes that length of time without news.

Now a "mild" has set in, and the incessant drip, drip, drip on the balcony roof outside my window makes me perfectly understand how lunacy and death follow the persistent falling of a single drop on one spot on the forehead.



February 11

Last week I had a three days' "cruise" while the doctor considerately sent a nurse up here to try her hand at my family. This time the cruise was "on the dogs" instead of the rolling sea. We left for Belvy (Bellevue) Bay in good time in the morning—"got our anchors early," as our "carter" put it. The animation of the dogs, the lovely snow-covered country, the bright winter's sun pouring down, and doubly brilliant by reflection from the dazzling snow, the huge bonfire in the woods where we "cooked the kettle," all make one understand the call which the gipsy answers. Of course there is another side to the story, when one is caught out in bitter weather in a blizzard of driving snow and sleet, and loses the way, or perhaps has to stay out in the open through the night. For instance, this winter four of the Mission dogs have perished through frost-bite on these journeys; and only last week we heard that one of the mail carriers on the west coast had been frozen to death.

A few years ago one dark and stormy night the Church of England clergyman was called to the sick-bed of a parishioner. He set out at once to cross the frozen bay and reached the cottage in safety. After a visit with the dying man he started on his homeward way. It was cold but clear, and he covered half the distance without trouble. Then the weather veered and blinding snow began to drive. The traveller lost his way battling against it, and finally sank down utterly exhausted. He was found dead in the morning on the open bay.

A day's trip brought us to Grevigneux, a charming little village nestling in a great bowl formed by the towering cliffs above and around it. Every one in the settlement is a Roman Catholic. Never did I receive such a welcome; the people are so friendly and unspoiled. The priest is a Frenchman, sensible, hearty, full of humour and love for his people. Both his ideas and his manner of expressing them are naive and appealing. I had been told that in his sermons he admonished certain members of his flock by name for their shortcomings. When I questioned him about this he gave me the following explanation: "You see, miss, when I die I shall stand before the Lord and my people will be standing behind me. The Lord will look them over and then look at me, and if any one of them isn't there he will say, 'Cartier, where is Tom Flannigan?' And I should have to answer, 'Gone to Purgatory for stealing boots.' And the Lord will say to me, 'Why, didn't he know better than to steal boots? You ought to have told him.' Whatever could I say for myself then?"

The next night we spent at Lance au Diable, locally known as "Lancy Jobble." In this place there is a "medicine man," with methods unique in science. He is the seventh son of a seventh son, and his healing powers are reputed to be little short of miraculous. Legend has it that such must never request payment for services, nor must the patient ever thank him, lest the efficacy of the cure be nullified. He is an unselfish man, a thorough believer in his own "gift"; and last summer, for instance, right in the middle of the fishing season, he walked thirty miles through swamp and marsh ridden with black flies, to see a sick woman who desired his aid. Doubtless the spell of his buoyant personality does bring comfort and relief. In the adjoining settlement of Bareneed lives an enormously fat old woman of seventy-odd summers. Life passes over her, and its only effect is to make her rotund and unwieldy. When the sick come to Brother Luke for treatment, if any of the few drugs which he has accumulated chance to have lost their labels—a not uncommon contingency in this land of mist and fog—he takes down a likely-looking bottle from the shelf, and tries a dose of the contents on this Mrs. Goochy—and awaits results. If nothing untoward transpires, he then passes the medicine on to the patient. Mrs. Goochy has a strong acquisitive bias, and raises no objections to this vicarious proceeding. She argues: "I doesn't need 'un now, but there be's no tellin'. I may need 'un when I can't get 'un."



Occasionally the sailing is not so smooth. While we were there the doctor saw a case of a woman from whom this AEsculapius had attempted to extract an offending molar, his only instrument being a kind of miniature winch which screws on to the undesired tooth. Its action proved so prompt and powerful that not only did it remove the tooth intended, but four others as well, and the entire alveolar process connected with them.



It often made me feel ashamed to find how much some of these people have made of their meagre opportunities. At one house a mother told me that she had only been able to go to school for six months when she was a girl, yet she had taught herself to read, and later her children also. She showed me most interesting articles which she had written for a Canadian newspaper describing the life on Le Petit Nord. She often had to sit up until two in the morning to knit her children's clothes, and rise again at dawn to prepare breakfast for the men of the household.

The following day saw us homeward bound, only this time the travelling was not so romantic, for a "mild" had set in, and the going was superlatively slushy. The dogs had all they could do to drag the komatik with the luggage on it. The humans walked, generally in front of the dogs, and on snow racquets, to make the trail a bit easier for the animals. This may sound an interesting way to spend a winter's day, but after twenty minutes of it you would cry "enough." When we reached Belvy Bay the ice around the shore was broken into great pans, but in the middle it looked good. To go round is an endless task, so we risked crossing. It was easy to get off to the centre, for the big pans at the edge would float a far greater weight than a komatik and dogs and three people. The ice in the middle, however, which had looked so sure from the landwash, proved to be "black"—that is, very, very thin, though being salt-water ice, it was elastic. It was waving up and down so as almost to make one seasick, but in its elasticity lay our only chance of safety. We flung ourselves down at full length on the komatik to give as broad a surface of resistance as possible, and what encouragement was given the dogs we did with our voices. Four miles did we drive over that swaying surface, and though at the time we were too excited to be nervous, we were glad to reach the "terra firma" of the standing ice edge.

At each place we were received with the most cordial welcome, and scarcely allowed even to express our gratitude. It was always they who were so eager to thank us for giving them unasked the "pleasure of our company." Their reception is always very touching. They put the best they have before you and will take nothing for their hospitality.

In my various letters to you I have so often taken away the characters of our dogs that I must tell you of one, just to show that I have not altered in my devotion to our "true first friend." This dog's name was "Black," and he lived many years ago at Mistaken Cove. The tales of his beauty, his cleverness at tricks, and his endurance of difficulties are still told, but chiefly of his devotion to his master. After years of this companionship the beloved master died and was buried in the woods near his lonely little house. Black was inconsolable. He would eat nothing; he started up at every slightest noise hoping for the familiar whistle; he haunted the well-worn woodpath where they had had so many happy days together. Finally he discovered his master's grave and was found frantically tearing at the hard earth and heavy stones. Nor would he leave the spot. Food was brought him daily, but it went untouched. For one whole week he lay in the wind and weather in the hole he had dug on the grave. There the children found him on the eighth morning curled up and apparently asleep. His long quest and vigil were ended, for he had reached the happy hunting grounds. Who shall say that a beloved hand and voice did not welcome him home?



St. Antoine Children's Home (by courtesy) February 28

Of one thing I am certain, we must have a new Home, for this house is not fit for habitation, and it is not nearly large enough. Even after my recent return from living in the tiny homes of the people which one would fancy to be far less comfortable, this is forcibly impressed upon me. We simply cannot go on refusing to take in children who need its shelter so badly. So please spread this broadcast among the friends in England. This Home has been enlarged once since it was built, and yet it is not nearly big enough for our present needs. We have no nursery, and I only wish you could see the tiny room which has to do duty for a sewing-room. It is certainly only called "room" by courtesy, for there is scarcely space to sit down, much less to use a needle without risk of injury to one's neighbour. The weekly mend alone, without the making of new things, means now between two and three hundred garments in addition to the boots, which the boys repair. As you can imagine, this is no light task and we are often driven almost distracted. I think the stockings are the worst, sometimes a hundred pairs to face at once! I fear we must once have been led into making some rather pointed remarks on this subject, for later, on going into the sewing-room, we found a slip of printed paper, cut from a magazine, and bearing the title of an article: "DON'T SCOLD THE CHILDREN WHEN THEY TEAR THEIR STOCKINGS."

This building rocks like a ship at sea; the roof continually leaks, the windows are always "coming abroad," and the panes drop out at "scattered times," while even when shut, the wind whistles through as if to show his utter disdain of our inhospitable and paltry efforts to keep him outside. On stormy nights, in spite of closed windows, the rooms resemble huge snowdrifts. Seven maids with seven mops sweeping for half a year could never get it clear. The building heaves so much with the frost that the doors constantly refuse to work, because the floors have risen, and if they are planed, when the frost disappears, a yawning chasm confronts you. Our storeroom is so cold in winter that we put on Arctic furs to fetch in the food, and in summer it is flooded so that we swim from barrel to barrel as Alice floated in her pool of tears. But far above all these minor discomforts is the one overwhelming desire not to have to refuse "one of these little ones."

One's heart aches when one remembers all the money and effort and love expended on a single child at home, that he may lack nothing to be prepared in body and spirit to meet the vicissitudes of his coming life journey. But in this land are hundreds of children, our own blood and kin, who must face their crushing problems often with bodies stunted from insufficient nourishment in childhood, and minds unopened and undeveloped, not through lack of natural ability, but because opportunity has never come to them. As one looks ahead one sees clearly what a contribution these eager children could offer their "day" if only their cousins at home had "the eyes of their understanding purged to behold things invisible and unseen."



March 10

The seals are in! That to you doubtless does not seem the most engrossing item of news that could be communicated, but that merely proves what a long road you have to travel. Before the break of day every man capable of carrying a weapon is out on the ice to try and get his share of the spoils.

They carry every conceivable sort of gun, but the six-foot muzzle-loaders are the favourites. These ancient weapons have been handed down from father to son for generations, and locally go by the somewhat misleading soubriquet of the "little darlints."

The people call the seals "swiles." There is an old story about a foreigner who once asked, "How do you spell 'swile'?" The answer the fisherman gave him was, "We don't spell [carry] 'em. We mostly hauls 'em."

Sea-birds have also come in the "swatches" of open water between the pans. A gale of wind and sea has broken up the ice, and driven it out of St. Mien's Bay, which is just round the corner from us. Thousands of "turr" are there, and the men are reaping many a banquet. A man's wealth is now gauged by the number of birds which are strung around the eaves of his house. It is a safe spot, for it keeps the birds thoroughly frozen, and well out of reach, at this time of year, of the ever-present dog.

Some of the men were prevented from being on the spot for bird shooting as promptly as they desired by the fact that their boats, having lain up all winter, were not "plymmed." If you put a dried apple, for instance, into water it "plymms"; so do beans, and so do boats. When a boat is not "plymmed," it leaks in all its seams, and is therefore looked upon as unsafe for these sub-Arctic waters by the more conservative amongst us. To stop a boat leaking you "chinch" the seams with oakum. Our fisherman sexton has just told me that "the church was right chinched last night."

One by one our supplies are giving out or diminishing. Each week as I send down an order to the store it is returned with some item crossed off. These articles at home would be considered the indispensables. Already potatoes have gone the way of all flesh; there is no more butter (though that is less loss than it sounds, for it was packed on the schooner directly next the kerosene barrels, and a liberal quantity of that volatile liquid incorporated itself in each tub of "oleo"). We are warned that the remaining amount of flour will not hold out till the spring boat—our first possible chance of getting reinforcements for our larder—unless we exercise the watchfulness of the Sphinx. The year before I came the first boat did not reach St. Antoine till the 28th of June.

More excitement has just been communicated to me by Topsy: much more. A man from the Baie des Francais has killed a huge polar bear. It took ten men and six dogs to haul the beast home after he had been finally dispatched. The man fired several shots at him, but did not hit a vital spot. One bullet only remained to him, and the bear was coming at him in a very purposeful manner. "Now or never," thought the fisherman, and fired. The creature fell dead almost at his feet. When they skinned him they found bullets in his legs and flank, but searched and searched in vain for the fatal one which had been the end of him. There was no mark on the skin in any vital spot. At last they found it. The ball had penetrated exactly through the bear's ear into his brain. All the countryside is now dining off bear steak; and there is a splendid skin to be purchased if you are so minded. I have eaten a bit of the steak, though I confess I did not sit down to the feast with any pleasurable anticipation, as the men said that they found the remains of a recently devoured seal in Bruin's "tum." I had an agreeable surprise. The meat was fibrous and a little tough, but it was quite good—a vast improvement on the sea-birds which are so highly valued in the local commissariat.



The Prophet has a vivid idea of the processes going on in the heads of animals. He says that up to fifteen years ago there were bears innumerable "in the country." "And one day, miss," he explained, "the whole crew of them gets their anchors and leaves in a body." To hear him one would imagine that at a concerted signal the bears came out of their burrows and shook the dust of the land from their feet.

The Eskimos toll the seals. They lie on the ice and wave their legs in the air, and the seals, curious animals, approach to discover the nature of the phenomenon, and are forthwith dispatched. One Eskimo of a histrionic temperament decided to "go one better." He went out to the ice edge, climbed into his sealskin sleeping-bag, and waved his legs, as per stage directions. We are not informed whether the device would have proved a successful decoy to the seals, for before any had been lured within range, another Innuit, having seen the sealskin legs gesticulating on the ice edge, naturally mistook them for the real thing, fired with regrettable accuracy, and went out to find a dead cousin.

The story is the only deterrent I have from dressing in my white Russian hareskin coat, and sitting in the graveyard some dusky evening. The people claim that the place is haunted. I have never met a "Yoho" and never expect to, but I would dearly love to see how others act when they think they have. Only the suspicion that they would "plump for safety," and fire the inevitable muzzle-loader at my white garment, keeps me from making the experiment in corpore vile.

The birds and the seals and the bears and white foxes coming south on the moving ice are signs of spring. There is a stir in the air as if the people as well sensed that the back of the long winter was broken. How it has flown! You cannot fancy my sensations of lonesomeness when I think that I shall never spend another in this country. You cannot describe or analyze the lure of the land and its people, but it is there, and grips you. I have grown to love it, and you will welcome home an uncomplimentary homesick comrade when September comes.



April 1

Last minute of Sunday, so here's to you. To-morrow I shall be cheerfully immersed up to the eyes in work.

Oh! this Home. How little it deserves the name! Our English storms are nothing but babies compared with the appalling blasts which sweep down upon us from the north. In summer the furious seas dash against the cliffs as if to protect them from the desecration of human encroachment. The fine snow filters in between the roof and ceiling of this building, and in a "mild," such as we are now experiencing, it melts, and endless little rivulets trickle down in nearly every room. The water comes in on my bed, on the kitchen range, and on the dining-room table. It falls on the sewing-machine in one room, on the piano and bookcase in another. Its catholicity of taste is plain disheartening!

You ask whether these kiddies have the stuff in them to repay what you are pleased to term "such an outlay of effort." My emphatic "yes" should have been so insistent as to have reached you by telepathy when the doubt first presented itself. The Home has been established now long enough to have some of its "graduates" go out into life; and the splendid manhood and womanhood of these young people are at once a sufficient reward to us and a silencing response to you. Many of them have been sent to the States and Canada for further education, and are now not only writing a successful story for themselves, but helping their less fortunate neighbours, in a way we from outside never can, to turn over many a new leaf in their books.

Yesterday I attended the theatre, only it was the operating theatre. The patient on this occasion was a doll, the surgeon a lad of seven, himself a victim of infantile paralysis, and the head nurse assisting was aged nine, and wears a brace on each leg. The stage was the children's ward of the hospital. Here are several pathetic little people, orthopedic cases, brought in for treatment during the winter, and who must stay till the spring boat arrives, as their homes are now cut off by interminable miles of snow wastes and icy sea. Nothing escapes their notice. They tear up their Christmas picture books, and when charged with the enormity of their offence, explain that they "must have adhesive tape for their operative work." Dick, the surgeon, was overheard the other day telling Margaret, the head nurse, as together they amputated the legs of her doll, "This is the way Sir Robert Jones does it."

Next to operating, the children love music; and they love it with a repertoire varied to meet every mood, from "Keep the Home Fires Burning" to "In the Courts of Belshazzar and a Hundred of his Lords." One three-year-old scrap comes from a Salvation Army household, and listens to all such melodies with marked disapproval. But when the others finish, she "pipes up," shutting her eyes, clapping her hands and swaying back and forth—

"Baby's left the cradle for the Golden Shore: Now he floats, now he floats, Happy as before."

Three of the kiddies are Roman Catholics and have taught their companions to say their prayers properly of an evening. They all cross themselves devoutly at the close; but this instruction has fallen on fallow ground in the wee three-year-old. She sits with eyes tightly screwed together lest she be forced even to witness such heresy and schism.

Yesterday I was walking with Gabriel when we came upon a tiny bird essaying his first spring song on a tree-top nearby. Gabriel looked at the newcomer silently for several minutes, and finally, turning his luminous brown eyes up to my face, asked, "Do he sing hymns, Teacher?"



April 19

The village sale was held last week. This has become an annual occurrence, and the proceeds are devoted to varying good objects. This time the hospital was the beneficiary. For months the countryside, men and women, have been making articles, and I can assure you it is a relief to have it over and such a success to boot, and life's quiet tone restored. We made large numbers of purchases, and consumed unbelievable quantities of more than solid nourishment. The people have shown the greatest ingenuity and diligence, and the display was a credit to their talent. I was particularly struck with the really clever carving representing local scenes which the fishermen had done with no other tools than their jack-knives. The auction was the keynote of the evening, due largely to the signal ability of the auctioneer. His methods are effective, but strictly his own. Cakes, made generally in graded layers and liberally coated with different coloured sugar, were the favourites. As he held up the last teetering mountain he "bawled": "What am I bid for this wonderful cake? 'Tis a bargain at any price. Why, she's so heavy I can't hold her with one hand." It fetched seven dollars!

The yearly meet for sports was held in the afternoon before the sale, and was voted by all to be a great success. It is a far cry from the days when games were introduced here by the Mission. Then the people's lives were so drab, and they had little idea of the sporting qualities which every Englishman values so highly. In those early days if in a game of football one side kicked a goal, they had to wait till the other had done the same before the game could proceed, or the play would have been turned into a battle. Now everything in trousers in the place can be seen of an evening out on the harbour ice kicking a ball about. The harbour is our very roomy athletic field.

Twenty-two teams had entered for the dog race, and the start, when the whole number were ranged up in the line, was pandemonium unloosed. The dogs were barking out threatenings and slaughter to the teams next them, their masters were shouting unheeded words of command, the crowd were cheering their favourites, and altogether you would never have guessed from the racket and confusion that you were north of the Roaring Forties.

The last event on the sports programme was a scramble for coloured candies by all the children of the village. Our flock from the Home participated. The proceeding was as unhygienic as it was alluring, and our surprise was great when a universally healthy household greeted the morrow morn.

When I heard the amount the poor folk had raised for charity out of their meagre pittance, I felt reproached. It is a consistent fact here that the people give and do more than their means justify, and it must involve a hard pinch for them in some other quarter.

Coming from the sale at ten at night I looked for our "Yoho" in passing the churchyard, but was unrewarded, though some of the harbour people assured me in the morning that they had seen it plainly. Can there be anything in the current belief that the men of the sea are more psychic than we case-hardened products of civilization, or is it merely superstition? There is a story here of a man called Gaulton, which is vouched for by all the older men who can recall the incident. It seems that in Savage Cove this old George Gaulton lived till he was ninety. He died on December 4, 1883. On the 16th he appeared in the flesh to a former acquaintance at Port au Choix, fifty miles from the spot at which he had died. This man Shenicks gives the following account of the curious visitation:

"I was in the woods cutting timber for a day and a half. During the whole of that time I was sure I heard footsteps near me in the snow, although I could see nothing. On the evening of the second day, in consequence of heavy rain, I returned home early. I knew my cattle had plenty of food, but something forced me to go to the hay-pook. While there, in a few moments I stood face to face with old George Gaulton. I was not frightened. We stood in the rain and talked for some time. In the course of the conversation the old man gave me a message for his eldest son, and begged me to deliver it to him myself before the end of March. Immediately afterwards he disappeared, and then I was terribly afraid."

A few weeks later Shenicks went all the way to Savage Cove and delivered the message given to him in so strange a fashion.

A word of apology and I close. In an early letter to you I recall judging harshly a concoction called "brewis." Experience here has taught me that our own delicacies meet with a similar fate at the hands of my present fellow countrymen. I offered Carmen on her arrival a cup of cocoa for Sunday supper. After one sniff, biddable and polite child though she was, I saw her surreptitiously pour the "hemlock cup" out of the open window behind her.



May 23

Many miles over the hills from St. Antoine lies one of the wildest and most beautiful harbours on this coast. Nestling within magnificently high rocks, the picturesque colouring of which is reflected in the quiet water beneath, lies the little village of Cremailliere. It is only a small settlement of tiny cottages beside the edge of the sea, but it has the unenviable reputation of being the worst village on the coast. In winter only three families live there, but in the summer-time a number of men come for the fishing, and they with their wives and children exist in almost indescribable hovels. Some of these huts are just rough board affairs, about six feet by ten, and resemble cow sheds more than houses. If there is a window at all, it is merely a small square of glass (not made to open) high up on one side of the wall. In some there is not even the pretence of a window, but in cases of severe sickness a hole is knocked through for ventilation on hearing of the near approach of the Mission doctor. The walls have only one thickness of board with no lining and the roofs are thatched with sods. There is no flooring whatever. Not one person in Cremailliere can either read or write.

Yesterday there was a funeral held in one of the little villages, and the mingling of pathos and humour made one realize more vividly than ever how "all the world's akin." A young mother had died who could have been saved if her folk had realized the danger in time and sent for the doctor. She was lying in a rude board coffin in the bare kitchen. As space was at a premium the casket had been placed on the top of the long box which serves as a residence for the family rooster and chickens. They kept popping their heads, with their round, quick eyes out through the slats, and emitting startled crows and clucks at the visitors. The young woman was dressed in all her outdoor clothing; a cherished lace curtain sought to hide the rough, unplaned boards of the coffin—for it had been hewn from the forest the day before. The depth of her husband's grief was evidenced by the fact that he had spent his last and only two dollars in the purchase, at the Nameless Cove general store, of the highly flowered hat which surmounted his wife's young careworn but peaceful face as she lay at rest.

I saw for the first time an old custom preserved on the coast. Before the coffin was closed all the family passed by the head of the deceased and kissed the face of their loved one for the last time, while all the visitors followed and laid their hands reverently on the forehead. Only when the master of ceremonies, who is always specially appointed, had cried out in a sonorous voice, "Any more?" and met with no response, was the ceremony of closing the lid permitted.

Surely the children are the one and only hope of this country. Through them we may trust to raise the moral standard of the generations to come, but it is going to be a very slow process to make any headway against the ignorance and absence of desire for better things which prevails so largely here.

I must tell you of the latest addition to our family. On the first boat in the spring there arrived a family, brought by neighbours, to say what the Mission could do for them. I think I have never seen a more forlorn sight than this group presented when they stepped from the steamer. There was the father (the mother is dead), an elderly half-witted cripple capable neither of caring for himself nor for his children, four boys of varying sizes, and a girl of fourteen in the last stages of tuberculosis. The family were nearly frozen, half-starved, and completely dazed at the hopelessness of their situation. The girl was admitted to the hospital, where she has since died, and the youngest boy, Israel, we took into the Home. Alas, we had only room for the one. Israel was at first much overawed by the standard of cleanliness required in this institution, and protested vigorously when we tried to put him into the bathtub. He explained to us that he never washed more than his face and hands at home, not even his neck and ears, the limitation of territory being strictly defined and scrupulously observed.



June 20

Unlike last year this summer promises to be hot, at least for this country. I have felt one great lack this year. You have to pass the long months of what would be lovely spring in England without a sign of a living blade of flower, though a few little songbirds did their best bravely to make it up to us. Already we are being driven almost crazy with the mosquitoes and black flies, songsters of no mean calibre, especially at night. In desperation our little ones yesterday succeeded in killing an unusually large specimen, and after burying it with great solemnity were heard singing around the grave in no uncheerful tones, "Nearer, my God, to Thee."

I hate to think that these next few weeks will be the last I shall spend in this country and with these children. The North seems to weave over one a kind of spell and fascination all its own. I look back sometimes and smile that I should ever have felt the year long or dreary; it has passed so quickly that I can scarcely believe it already time to be thinking of you and England again. I may emulate the example of Mrs. Lot, but with the certainty that a similar fate to hers does not await me.

I have just unpacked a barrel of clothing sent from home to the Orphanage, and find to my disgust that it is almost entirely composed of muslin blouses and old ladies' bonnets! What am I to do with them? The blouses I can use as mosquito veiling, but these bonnets are not the kind our babies wear. I shall present one to Topsy, who will look adorable in it.

You hint it is hard to get up interest in Labrador because we are neither heathen nor black. I can imagine your sewing circle of dear old ladies (perhaps they sent the bonnets) discussing the relative merits of working to send aeroplanes to the Arabs, bicycles to the Bedouins, comforters to the Chinese, jumpers to the Japanese, handkerchiefs to the Hottentots, hair nets to the Hindoos, mouth organs to the Mohammedans, pinafores to the Parsees, pyjamas to the Papuans, prayer-books to the Pigmies, sandwiches to the South Sea Islanders, or zithers to the Zulus. Just wait till I can talk to your dear old ladies!

A few days ago we had a very narrow escape from fire; indeed, it seemed for some time as if the whole of the Mission would be wiped out. It was a half-holiday and our boys had gone fishing to the Devil's Pond, a favourite spot of theirs, about a mile away. Unfortunately Noah was seized with the idea of lighting a fire by which to cook the trout, the matches having been stolen from my room. It had been dry for several days, there was quite a wind, and the fire, catching the furze, quickly got beyond the one required for culinary purposes. The boys first tried to smother it with their coats, but finding that of no avail ran home to give the alarm. By the time the men could get to the spot the fire had spread so rapidly that attention had to be turned towards trying to save the houses. The doctor's house was the one most directly threatened at first, and we proceeded to strip it of all furniture, carrying everything to the fore-shore to be ready to be taken off if necessary. The doctor was away on a medical call, and you can imagine my feelings when I expected every moment to see the Northern Light come round the point, the doctor's house in flames and his household goods scattered to the winds! Then we dismantled this place—the children having been sent at the outset to a place of safety—and removed the patients from the hospital. Every man in the place was hard at work, and there were few of us who dared to hope that we should have a roof over our heads that night. Happily the wind suddenly dropped, the fire died down, and late that night we were able to return and endeavour to sort out babies and furniture. The goddess of disorder reigned supreme, and it was only after many weary hours that we were able to find beds for the babies and babies for the beds. And it was our boys who started the fire! I am covered with confusion every second when I stop to think of it, and wonder if this is not the psychological moment to make my exit from this Mission.



July 11

By invitation of the doctor I am off for a trip on the Northern Light next week. He offers me thus the chance to see other portions of the Shore before he drops me at the Iron Bound Islands, where I can connect with the southern-going coastal steamer. The Prophet has encouraged me with the observation that "nearly all the female ladies what comes aboard her do be wonderful sick," but I am not to be deterred. So:

"Now, Brothers, for the icebergs of frozen Labrador, Floating spectral in the moonshine along the low, black shore. Where in the mist the rock is hiding, and the sharp reef lurks below; And the white squall smites in summer, and the autumn tempests blow."

This is a mere scrap of a greeting, for the day of departure is so near that I feel I want to spend every minute with the kiddies. I count on your forbearance, and your knowledge that though my pen is quiet, my heart still holds you without rival.



On board the Northern Light July 16

Is to-day as lovely in your part of the world as it is in mine, and do you greet it with a background of as exciting a night as the one that has just passed over us? I wonder. I came across some old forms of bills of lading sent out to this country from England. They always closed with this most appropriate expression, "And so God send the good ship to her desired port in safety." It has fallen into disuse long ago, but about break of early day the idea took a very compelling shape in my mind. We put out from Bonne Esperance just as night was falling, and there was no moon to aid us. The doctor had decided on the outside run, and brief as is my acquaintance with the "lonely Labrador," I knew what that meant. I therefore betook myself betimes to bed as the best spot for an unseasoned mariner. Twelve o'clock found us barely holding our own against a furious head wind and sea—"An awful night for a sinner," as our cheery Prophet remarked as he lurched past my cabin door. Icebergs were dotted about. Great combers were pouring over our bow and the floods came sweeping down the decks sounding like the roar of a thousand cataracts.

The only way one could keep from being hurled out of one's berth was to cling like a leech to a rope fastened to a ring in the wall, for the little ship was bouncing back and forth so fast and so far that it was impossible to compare it with the motion of any other craft. Day began to dawn about 3 A.M. By the dim light I could make out mighty mountains of green foaming water. At each roll of the steamer we seemed to be at the bottom of a huge emerald pit. Suddenly some one yelled, "There she goes!" and that second the boat was dragged down, down, down. An immense wave had caught us, rolled us so far over that our dory in davits had filled with water to the brim. As the ship righted herself, the weight of the dory snapped off the davit at the deck, and the boat, still attached by her painter, was dragged underneath our hull, and threatened to pull us down with it. In two seconds the men had cut her away, but not before she had nearly banged herself to matchwood against our side.

Now we are lying under the lea of St. Augustine Island waiting for the wind to abate. The chief engineer has just offered to row me ashore to hunt for young puffins. More later.



There were hundreds of them in every family, and so many families that it resembled nothing so much as a puffin ghetto. I judged from the turmoil that they were screeching for "a place in the sun." The noise they made did not in the least accord with their respectable Quaker appearance. Shall I bring you one as a pet? Its austere presence would help you to remember your "latter end."

When I wrote you that there was ice about, I did not refer to the field ice through which we travelled on my way north. This is the real thing this time—icebergs, and lots of them. They call the little ones "growlers," and big and little alike are classed as "pieces of ice"! They are not my idea of a "piece" of anything. I know now what the Ancient Mariner meant when he said:

"And ice mast high came floating by As green as emerald."

It exactly describes them, only it doesn't wholly describe them, for no one could. They loom up in every shape and size and variation of form, pinnacles and towers and battlements, stately palaces of glittering crystal, triumphal archways more gorgeous than ever welcomed a conqueror home. Sometimes they are shining white, too dazzling to look at; and sometimes they are streaked with great vivid bands of green and azure which are so unearthly and brilliant that I feel certain some fairy has dipped his brush in the solar spectrum and dabbed the colours on this gigantic palette.

A sea without these jewels of the Arctic will forever look barren and unfinished to me after this. Even the sailors, who know too well what a menace they are to their craft, yield to their beauty a mute and grudging homage. To sit in the sun or the moonlight, and watch a heavy sea hurling mountains of water and foam over one of these ocean monarchs is a never-to-be-forgotten experience. So too it is to listen to the thunder of one of them "foundering"; for their equilibrium is very unstable, and the action of the sea, as they travel southwards to their death in the Gulf Stream, cuts them away at the surface of the water. Blocks weighing unbelievable tons crash off them, or they will suddenly, without a second's warning, break into a million pieces. I can never conquer a creepiness of the spine as I listen to one of these tragedies. It is a startling, new sensation such as we never expect to meet again after childhood has shut its doors on us. In the quiet that follows the gigantic disintegration one half expects to see a new heaven and a new earth emerge out of the chaos of ice quivering in the water.

You often warned me in the course of the past year how dull life would be. You knew how I loved a city. I still do. But the last word on earth one could apply to the life here is "dull." Nature takes care of that. I defy you to walk along any street in London and see six porpoises and a whale! That is what I saw this morning. Oh! of course you may counter by telling me that neither can I see an automobile or a fire engine, but I have you, because I can answer that I have seen them already. How are you going to get out of that corner, except by saying that you do not want to see the old porpoises and whales and bergs?—and I know your "Scotch" conscience forbids such distortion of facts.

I have come to believe in the personality of porpoises. They swam beside the ship, playing about in the water all the while, rolling over and diving, and chasing each other just as if they knew they had a "gallery." We did not reward them very well either, for the Prophet shot one, and we ate bits of him for lunch—the porpoise, I mean, not the Prophet. I thought he would make a good companion-piece for the polar bear, and he was quite edible. He only needed a rasher of bacon to make you believe he was calf's liver.

So you see that between puffins and porpoises and whales, and "growlers" and lost dories, I crowded enough into one day to give me dreams that Alice in Wonderland might covet.

In your secret heart don't you wish that you too were

"Where the squat-legged Eskimo Waddles in the ice and snow, And the playful polar bear Nips the hunter unaware; Where the air is kind o' pure, And the snow crop's pretty sure"?



July 22

It has been days since I wrote you, and they have slipped by so stealthily I must have missed half they held.

Since coming aboard I have taken to rising promptly. It is a necessary measure if I am to be able to rise at all. One morning I stuck my head out just in time to see my favourite sweater, which I had counted on for service on the homeward voyage, disappearing over the rail—legitimately, so far as concerned the wearer. Last week, by the merest fluke, I rescued my best boots from a similar fate. The doctor explained lamely on each occasion that they got mixed with the clothing sent for distribution to the poor. This may be a literal statement of fact, but I doubt the manner of the mixing.

We celebrated to-day by running aground on the flats. You can "squeak" over them if you happen to strike the channel. The difficulty is, however, that the sandy bottom shifts. To-day it is, and to-morrow it is not. I was eating one of those large, hearty breakfasts which the combination of a dead flat calm and a sunshiny brisk air make such a desideratum. I was, moreover, perched on the top of the wheel house, and reflecting on the poor taste of the author of the Book of Revelation when he said that in heaven "there shall be no more sea." At this moment I came to with a lurch. "She's stuck!" yelled, or as he himself would put it, "bawled," the Prophet. For once he was undeniably right. Fortunately the tide was on the flood, and we floated off a short while after.

In the afternoon we visited an Eskimo Moravian station. They—the Eskimos, not the Moravians—are a jolly little people, and picturesque as possible. Not that any aspersions on the Moravians are intended, for I have the greatest respect for them. My shining leather coat made a great hit. They fondled it and stroked it, and coo-ed at it as if it were a new baby. All the women past their very first youth seemed toothless. I wondered if it could be a characteristic of the tribe—sort of Manx Eskimo. I asked the Prophet what was the cause of the universal shortage, and was told that the Eskimo women all chew the sealskin to soften it for making into boots. You can take this statement for what it may be worth.

Speaking of which I have just finished reading a ludicrously furious attack on the Mission in a St. John's paper, for its alleged misrepresentations. It seems that last year the former superintendent took down a boy from the Children's Home to give him a chance at further education. He had a wooden leg, his own having been removed by an operation for tuberculosis. On his arrival in Montreal the omnivorous reporter saw in him excellent copy, and forthwith printed the following purely fictitious account of the cause of his disability. Little Kommak, so the story ran (the boy is of pure Irish extraction, and is named Michael Flynn), was one day sitting with his mother in his igloo when he saw a large polar bear approaching. Having no weapon, and not desiring the presence of the bear in any capacity at their midday meal, he stuck his leg out through the small aperture of the igloo. The bear bit it off on the principle of half a loaf being better than no bread. The whole thing was a fabric of lies from beginning to end. The St. John's papers discovered the article, pounced upon it, and printed the article "que je viens de finir." Of course, if the local editor lacked humour enough to credit the doctor with such a fairy tale, one could pity the poor soul, but his diatribe has rather the earmarks of jealousy.



A lovely sunset is lighting up the sea and sky and hills, and turning the plain little settlement, in the harbour of which we are anchored, into the Never, Never Land. The scene is so bewitching that I find my soul purged by it of the bad taste of the attack. I'll leave you to digest the mixed metaphor undisturbed while I go below and help with the patients who have begun pouring aboard.

Same evening

An old chap has just climbed over the rail, who looks like an early patriarch, but his dignity is impaired by the moth-eaten high silk hat which surmounts his white hair. The people regard him with apparent deference, due either to the hat or his inherent character. Looking at his fine old face, one is inclined to believe it is the latter.

The expressions these people use are so nautical and so apt! Every patient who comes aboard expressed the wish to be "sounded" in some portion of his or her anatomy for the suspected ailment which has brought him. One burly fisherman solemnly took off his huge oily sea-boot, placed a grimy forefinger on his heel, and remarked sententiously that the doctor "must sound him right there." The prescription was soap and water—a diagnosis in which I entirely concurred. The next case was a young girl with a "kink in her glutch." It has the sound of all too familiar motor trouble, but was dismissed as psychopathic. I wish that a similarly simple diagnosis accounted for the mysterious ailments of automobiles. My meditations on modern science were interrupted by an insistent voice proclaiming that "my head is like to burst abroad."

If I were a woman on this coast my temper would "burst abroad" to see the men—some of them—spitting all over the floors of the cottages: disgusting and particularly dangerous in a country where the arch-enemy, tuberculosis, is ever on the watch for victims. But the new era is slowly dawning. Now, instead of hooking "Welcome Home" into the fireside mat, you find "DONT SPIT" worked in letters of flame. It is the harbinger of the feminist movement in the land.

Speaking of the feminist movement makes me think of a woman at Aquaforte Harbour. She deserves a book written about her. In the first place, Elmira had the courage of her convictions, and did not marry. Her convictions were that marriage was desirable if you get the right man who can support you properly, and not otherwise. This is generations in advance of the local attitude to the holy estate. She has lived a life of single blessedness to the coast. In every trouble along her section of the shore it is "routine" to send for "Aunt" 'Mira. She has more sense and unselfishness and native wit than you would meet in ten products of civilization. For a year she acted as nurse to the little boy of one of the staff, and never was child better cared for. They once told 'Mira she really must make baby take his bottle. (He had the habit of profound slumber at that time.) "Oh! I does, ma'm," 'Mira replied. "If he dwalls off, I gives him a scattered jolt." The family took her to England with them, and her remarks on the trains showed where her ancestry lay. When they backed she exclaimed, "My happy day! We're goin' astern!" She requested to be allowed to "open the port"; and at a certain junction where there was a long delay she asked to go "ashore for a spell."

That "hell is paved with good intentions" is no longer a glib phrase to me; it is a conviction born of seeing some of the suffering of this country. The doctor has just been ashore to see a woman with a five-days old baby. No attempt whatever had been made to get her or her bed clean or comfortable. She had developed a violent fever, and the local midwives, with their congenital terror of the use of water—internal or external—had larded the miserable creature over from head to foot with butter, and finished off with a liberal coating of oakum. The doctor said, by the time he had himself scraped and bathed her, put her in a fresh cool bed with a jug of spring water beside her to drink, she looked as if she thought the gates of Paradise had opened.

Mails reached us at the Moravian station, and your most welcome letters loomed large on the postal horizon. You ask if I have not found the year long. I will answer by telling you the accepted derivation of the name "Labrador." It comes from the Portuguese, and means "the labourer," because those early voyagers intended to send slaves back to His Majesty. Well-filled time, so the psychologists tell us, is short in passing, and "down North," before you are half into the day's tasks, you look up to find that "the embers of the day are red." You must have guessed, too, that I should not have evinced such contentment during these months if my fellow workers had not been congenial. I shall always remember their devotion, and readiness to serve both one another and the people; and I know that the years to come will only deepen my appreciation of what their friendship has meant to me.

How glad I was when the winter came, and I was no longer classed as a newcomer! I had heard so much about dog driving that I remember thinking the resultant sensations must be akin to those Elijah experienced in his chariot. But now I have driven with dogs in summer, and that is more than most of the older stagers can boast. In a prosperous little village in the Straits lives the rural dean. He is a devoted and practical example of what a shepherd and bishop of souls can be. There is not a good work for the benefit of his flock—and he is not bound by the conventional and unchristian denominational prejudices—which does not find in him a leader. His interests range from cooeperation to a skin-boot industry. But the problem of getting about when you have no Aladdin's carpet is acute. He goes by dog sled and shanks' pony in winter, and used to go by boat and shanks' pony in summer. Then one day he had the inspiration of building a two-wheeled shay, and harnessing in his lusty and idle dog team. Now he drives about at a rate that "Jehu the son of Nimshi would approve," and is independent of winds and weather.

Sunday to-morrow. We are running south for the Ragged Islands. If I were not on the hospital ship, and therefore an involuntary example to the people, I would fall into my bunk at night with my clothes on, I am so weary.



Ragged Islands Sunday night

Just aboard again after Prayers at the little church. It is a quaint and crude little edifice, and the people were so kindly and the service so hearty that one feels "wonderfu' lifted up." To be sure, during the sermon I was suddenly brought up "all standing" by the amazing statement that the "Harch Hangels go Hup, Hup, Hup." One felt in one's bones that this was a misapprehension. The very earnest clergyman may have noticed my obvious disagreement, for at the close he announced, "We will now sing the 398th hymn"—

"Day of Wrath, oh! Day of Mourning, See fulfilled the Prophet's warning, Heaven and earth in ashes burning."

This goes off into the blue on the chance of its reaching you before I come myself and share a secret with you; for to-morrow we are due at the Iron Bound Islands, and there I leave the Northern Light, and end the chapter of my life as a member of the Mission staff. The appropriateness of the closing hymn in the little church last night is borne more than ever forcibly in upon me with the chill light of early morning, for I verily feel as though my world were tottering about my ears.

I am still optimist enough to know that life will hold many experiences which will enrich it, but in my secret heart I cherish the conviction that this year will always stand out as a keynote, and a touchstone by which to judge those which succeed it. My greatest solace in the ache which I feel in taking so long a farewell of a people and country that I love is that I shall always possess them in memory—a treasure which no one can take from me. As I look back over the quickly speeding year I find that I have forgotten those trivial incidents of discomfort which pricked my hurrying feet. All I can recall is the rugged beauty of the land, the brave and simple people with their hardy manhood and more than generous hospitality, and most of all my little bairns who hold in their tiny hands the future of Le Petit Nord.





The Riverside Press Cambridge . Massachusetts U.S.A.



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Typographical error corrected in text: Page 175: household gods replaced with household goods

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