Anne Grenfell

“ 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 Crémaillière. 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ It is certainly a wonderfully fascinating coast, beautifully green and wooded in the south, and becoming bleaker and barer the farther north one travels. But the bare ruggedness and naked strength of the north have perhaps the deeper appeal. To those who have to sail its waters and wrest a living from the harvest of the sea, this must be a cruel shore, with its dangers from rocks and icebergs and fog, and insufficient lighting and charting. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Here at least one would not feel like a rat in a hole if a long, gleaming, icy, giant finger should rip the ship's side open down the length of her. As we grate and scrape painfully along I look back and see that the ice-pan channel we leave behind is lined with scarlet. It is the paint off our hull. The spectacle is all too suggestive for one who has always regarded the most attractive aspect of the sea to be viewed from the landwash. ”

“ The ship's ladder was dropped as we came to anchor opposite the small Mission wharf. The water is too shallow to allow a large steamer to go into it, but the hospital boat, the Northern Light, with her draft of only eight feet, can easily make a landing there. We scrambled over the side and secured a seat in the mail boat. Before we knew it four hearty sailors were sweeping us along towards the little dock. Here, absolutely wretched and forlorn, painfully conscious of crumpled and disordered garments, I turned to face the formidable row of Mission staff drawn up in solemn array to greet us. ”

“ Teams of dogs sprang up seemingly out of the snow-covered earth, and in a mere twinkling our frozen and silent harbour was an arena of activity. The freight is dumped on the ice over the ship's side with the big winch, and each man must hunt for his own as it descends. ”

“ You can form no idea of one's sensations as the steamer pushes her way through an ice jam. For miles around, as far as the eye can reach, the sea is covered with huge, glistening blocks. Sometimes the deep-blue water shows between, and sometimes they are so tightly massed together that they look like a hummocky white field. How any one can get a steamer along through it is a never-ending source of amazement, and my admiration for the captain is unstinted. ”

“ When I look about me and see this poverty, the ignorance born of lack of opportunity, the suffering, the dirt, and degradation which are in so large a measure no fault of these poor folk, I am overwhelmed at the wealth of opportunities. Here at least every talent one has to offer counts for double what it would at home.
Thousands of fishermen come from the south each spring to take part in the summer's fishery. The Labrador "liveyeres," who remain on the coast all the year round, often have only little one-roomed huts made of wood and covered with sods. ”

“ Indeed, when David has ceased speaking, one waits involuntarily for Ananias to begin in his shrill treble tones. He is a hopeless child to correct, for when you imagine you are scolding him very severely, and you look for the tears of penitence to flow, he puts up his little face with an angelic smile, and lisps, "Tiss me."
Drusilla, whose slight acquaintance you have already made, is three and comes from Savage Cove. The father has gradually become blind and the mother is crippled. Drusilla keeps us all on the alert, for we never know what she will be doing next. ”

“ With her flashing black eyes, straight, jet-black hair, square, squat shoulders, she looks the very embodiment of the Evil One. She is twelve, but shows neither ability nor desire to learn. Her habits are disgusting, and unless closely watched she will be found filling her pockets with the contents of the garbage pail—and this in spite of the fact that we are no longer dining off one herring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is at the north end of Le Petit Nord that St. Antoine is located.
The very character of the country and vegetation has changed. It is as if the great, forbidding fortress of St. John's Cape cut off the milder influences of southern Newfoundland, and left the northern peninsula a prey to ice and winds and fog. The people, too, have felt the influence of this discrimination of Nature. There is a line of demarcation between those who have been able to enjoy the benefits of the southern island, and those who have had to cope with the recurrent problems of the northland. ”

“ No wonder the trees have such a struggle for existence, if these storms are frequent. They do not last long, but they are the real thing while they are in progress. I used to smile when I was told that the Home was riveted with iron bolts to the solid bedrock, but that night when I lay wide awake, combating an incipient feeling of mal de mer as my bed rocked with the force of the gale, I thanked the fates for the foresight of the builders. Never before had I believed in the tale of the church having been blown bodily into the harbour ”

“ 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. ”

“ Our fast-coming winter is sending its harbingers, seen and unseen, into our harbour. Chief among these one notices the assertiveness of the dogs. All through the summer they slink pariah-like about the place, eating whatever they can pick up, and seeking to keep their miserable existence as much in the background as possible. Now the winter is approaching, and it is "their little day." Mrs. Uncle Life can testify to the fact that they are not wholly suppressed when it is not "their little day." ”

“ 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. ”

“ You have probably heard the old story about the difference between the Labrador and the New Jersey mosquito? The Labrador species can be readily distinguished by the black patch between his eyes about the size of a man's hand. Of the lot I prefer the mosquito. He at least is open about his evil intentions. The black fly darts at you quietly, settles down on an un-get-at-able spot, and sucks your blood. If I did not find my appetite so unimpaired, I should fancy this morning I was suffering from an acute attack of mumps. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The ceilings are low and thin, and the walls are near and thin, and the children are omnipresent and not thin, and their wants and their joys and their quarrels are as numerous as the fishes in the sea, and there you have the problem in a nutshell. ”

“ It was sometimes a delicate problem to decide which of many pressing duties had the prior claim. Whether to try and feed the hungry (the kitchen range having sprung a leak) , to start to repair two hundred odd garments (the weekly mend) , or to resuscitate one of the babies (just rescued from the reservoir) . At such times I would wonder if I were somewhere near attaining to that state of experience when I should be able to appreciate your alluring phrase, "the fun of mothering an orphanage." ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a pity that the climate will not allow of a simple loin cloth and a string of beads. And how infinitely more becoming. Then, too, how much easier would be the food problem were we dusky Papuans dwelling in the far-off isles of the sea. This country produces nothing but fish, and we have to plan our food supplies for a year in advance. How much corn-meal mush will David eat in twelve months? And if David eats so much in twelve months, how much will Noah, two months younger, eat in the same period of time? If one herring satisfies thirty-six, how many dozen will a herring and a half feed? ”

“ 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. ”

“ Gabriel is a very naughty, but equally lovable child. He is never out of mischief, but he is always very penitent for his misdeeds—afterwards! His bent is towards theology, and he speaks with the authority of an ancient divine on all matters pertaining thereto, and with an air of finality which brooks no argument. When some one was being given the priority in point of age over me, he was heard to indignantly exclaim that "Jesus and Teacher are the oldest people in the world." ”

“ In the winter the northern people move up the bays and go "furring." Both the Indians and Eskimos are diminishing in numbers, and the former at the present time do not amount to more than three or four thousand persons—and of these the Montagnais tribe make up more than half. The Moravian missionaries have toiled untiringly amongst the Eskimos, and assuredly not for any earthly reward. They go out as young men and practically spend their whole life on the coast, their wives being selected and sent out to them from home! ”