 6 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 muzzleloaders are the favorites. These ancient weapons have been handed down from father to son for generations, and locally go by the somewhat misleading sobriquet of the little darlings. 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 them, carry them. We mostly hauls them. Seabirds 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. Meehan's Bay, which is just around the corner from us. Thousands of turds 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 laying up all winter, were not plimmed. If you put a dried apple, for instance, into water it plims, so do beans and so do boats. When a boat is not plimmed, it leaks in all its seams, and is therefore looked upon as unsafe for these subarctic waters by the more conservative amongst us. To stop a boat leaking, you chinch the seams with oak-em. Our fisherman's 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 indispensable. Already potatoes have gone the way of all flesh. There is no more butter, though that is less lost than it sounds, for it was packed on the schooner directly next to the kerosene barrels, and a liberal quantity of that volatile liquid incorporated itself in each tub of olio. 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 San Antoine till the 28th of June. More excitement has just been communicated to me by Topsy much more. A man from the Baye de Français has killed a huge polar bear. He 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-stake, and there is a splendid skin to be purchased, if you were 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 Bruins' tum. I had an agreeable surprise. The meat was fibrous, and a little tough, but it was quite good. A vast improvement on the seabirds 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 can get 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 seal-skin 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 Inuit, having seen the seal-skin 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 hair-skin coat, and sitting in the graveyard some dusky evening. The people claim that the place is haunted. I have never met a yo-ho, 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 ville. 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 uncomplementary homesick comrade when September comes. April 1. Last minute of Sunday, so here's to you. Tomorrow 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 at 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 kitties have the stuff in them to repay what you were 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 the 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 age 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 ice-y 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 Bel Shazzar and a hundred of his lords. One three-year-old scrap comes from a Salvation Army household, and listens to all such melodies with market disapproval. But when the others finish, she pipes up, shutting her eyes, clapping her hands, and swaying back and forth. Babies left the cradle for the golden shore. Now he floats, now he floats happy as before. Three of the kitties are Roman Catholics, and have taught their companions to say their prayers properly of an evening. They all crossed 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 assaying his first spring song on a treetop nearby. Gabriel looked at the newcomer silently for several minutes, and finally, turning his luminous brown eyes up to my face, asked, Do we 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 in 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 jackknives. The auction was the keynote of the evening, due largely to the signal ability the auctioneer. His methods are effective, but strictly his own. Cakes made generally in graded layers and liberally coated with different colored sugar were the favorites. As he held up the last teetering mountain, he bawled, What am I bid for this wonderful cake? Does it bargain at any price? Why is she 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 until 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 harbor ice kicking a ball about. The harbor 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 to them. Their masters were shouting unheeded words of command. The crowd were cheering their favorites, 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 program was a scramble for colored 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 moral mourn. When I heard the amount the poor folk had raised for charity out of their meager 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 yo-ho in passing the churchyard, but was unrewarded, though some of the harbor 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 Galton, which is vouched for by all the older men who can recall the incident. It seems that in Savage Cove this old George Galton lived till he was ninety. He died on December 4, 1883. On the sixteenth he appeared in the flesh to a former acquaintance at Port-O-Schwa, fifty miles from the spot at which he had died. This man, Shenix, 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 Galton. 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 Shenix 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 bruise. 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, bitable 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 San 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 Cremoyer. 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 cowsheds more than houses. If there is a window at all, it is merely a square piece of glass, not made to open, high up on one side of the wall. In some there is not even the pretense 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 Cremoyer can either read or write. Yesterday there was a funeral held in one of the little villages, and the mingling of pathos and humor made one realize more vividly than ever how all the worlds 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 unplained 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, care-worn 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 was 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 neighbors 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-footed 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 flour, 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 caliber, 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 round the grave in no unsureful 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. Lott, 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 Muslim blouses and old ladies' bonnets. What am I to do with them? The blouses I can use is mosquito-availing, but these bonnets are not the kind our babies wear. I shall present one to Topsy, who will look adorable in it. You hinted 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 Hutton-tuts, hairnets to the Hindus, mouth organs to the Mohammedans, pinafores to the Parsis, pajamas to the Papuans, prayer-brooks to the Pygmies, 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, the favorite 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 furs quickly got beyond the one required for culinary purposes. The boys first tried to smother it with their coats, but finding that of Noah Vale 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 foreshore 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 around 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 endeavor 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. I wonder if this is not the psychological moment to make my exit from this mission. End of Section 6, Recording by Shawn Michael Hogan. Section 7 of Le Petit Noir. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Le Petit Noir by Anne Grenfell and Katie Spalding. Section 7. 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 ironbound 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 of order, 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, wherein 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 so near that I feel I want to spend every minute with the kitties. 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 today 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 sent 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 Bonnet's barrence 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 be times to bed as the best spot for an unseasoned mariner. Twelve o'clock found us barely holding our own against a furious headwind 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 comers 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 three 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 someone 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 lee of St. Augustine Island, waiting for the wind to abate. The chief engineer has just offered to roll 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? It's us dear 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 massed high came floating by as green as emerald. It exactly describes them, although 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 warning break into a million pieces. I could 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 the 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 might counter it 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 sliver. 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 of pure, and the snow crops pretty sure? July 22 It has been days since I wrote to 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 favorite 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 today 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. Today it is, and tomorrow it is not. I was eating one of those large, hearty breakfasts which the combination of a dead, flat, calm, and a sun-shiny brisk air makes 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 stuck! yelled, or as he himself would put it, bald 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 picture-risk 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 cooed at it as if it were a new baby. All the women passed 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 seal-skin 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 him in excellent copy, and forthwith printed the following purely fictitious account of the cause of his disability. Little Comac, so the story ran, the boy is a 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, Cus je viens de finir. Of course, if the local editor lacked humor enough to credit the doctor with such a fairytale, 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 harbor 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 do 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, don't 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 Aquafort Harbour. She deserves a book written about her. In the first place, Elmyre 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 the life of single blessedness to the coast. In every trouble along her section of the shore it is routine to send for Aunt Myra. 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 the child better cared for. They once told Myra she really must make baby take his bottle. He had the habit of profound slumber at that time. Oh, it does, ma'am, Myra replied. If he dwells off, I give him a scatter 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 going 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 assured to see a woman with a five days old baby. No attempt whatever had been made to get his 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. Males reached us at the Moravian station, and your most welcome letter is loomed to 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 laborer, because those early voyagers intended to send slaves back to his majesty. Well filled time, so the psychologist 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 to 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 hunger-glassed 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 stages can boast. In a prosperous little village in the Straits lives the royal 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 un-christian denominational prejudices, which does not find in him a leader. His interests range from cooperation 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 shea and harnessing in his lusty and idle dog-team. Now he drives about at a rake 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 wonderful lifted up. To be sure, during the sermon I was suddenly brought up all standing, by the amazing statement that the harch angels go hop, hop, hop! 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 shouted, we will now sing the 398th hymn. Day of wrath, O day of mourning, sea fulfilled the prophet's warning, heaven and earth in ashes burning. This goes off into the blue on the chance of it reaching you before I come myself and share a secret with you. For tomorrow we are due at the ironbound islands, and there I leave the northern light, and in 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 barely 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 hearty manhood and more than generous hospitality, and most of all my little barons who hold in their tiny hands the future of Le Petit-Nord. End of section seven, recording by Sean Michael Hogan, St. John's Newfoundland, Canada. End of Le Petit-Nord by Anne Grenfell and Katie Spalding.