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GRENFELL OF LABRADOR • • < .· Grenfell of Labrador By James Johnston, F.R.H.S. Author of " Missionary Landscapes in the Dark Continent,'' etc, FULLY ILLUSTRATED London S. W. Partridge & Co., Ltd. E.C.4 1tbe man on tbe 1abrat'lot To WILJ't.•D T. GJ.BMJ'BLL Calmly we fare oa the charted coasts By the buoy ancl bell and Ucht; But long ia hi& watch on the Labrador, And keenly he lists for the breakers' roar When the white fog drifts like a troop of ghosts, Or he steers through the murky night. And this is the gift that he brings the souls To whom he steers in the night ; Chart for their voyage o'er life's wild sea, Knowledge of reefs on the beetling lee, News of a Pilot when nearing shoals, And the Bash of a harbour light. Ozou S. DAVIS. Otdltattd To GRENFELL'S MOTHER BY THE AUTHOR Preface I have much pleasure in acceding to the Author's request that I should write a few lines by way of pref~ce to his Life of Dr. Grenfell. It is twenty years since Dr. Grenfell was appointed Superintendent of the work being carried on by the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen in the North Sea and elsewhere round the shores of the British Isles, and from the day he gave himself to the cause of the fisher­ men his life may be said to have been one long, ceaseless effort to uplift and help the men whose lot he has made his own, and whose perils and hardships he has ever since been sharing. The Labrador Branch of the Society's work now claims Dr. Grenfell's undivided attention, and from June to November he is engaged in cruising about in the little hospital steamer " Strathcona " between the Straits of Belle Isle and Cape Chidley for the purpose of carrying healing and comfort to the dwellers upon those inhospitable, ice-bound shores. In winter he prosecutes the same kind of work with komatik and dog teams. It is the great love he bears these brave men of the North, and his large­ hearted sympathy with the stress and hardship of their lives, which leads him to endure for their sake what to most men, reared under similar circumstances, would prove an altogether insupportable existence. Something of what Dr. Grenfell has achieved is re­ corded in the pages of this volume, but to fully know the man himself, and to gain a true appreciation of his PREFACE courageous and lofty spirit, to understand the difficulties he has overcome, and the victories he has gained over ignorance and prejudice, to realize the brightness and joy he has scattered on the lonely shores of Labrador, one needs to have cruised with him along the eleven hundred miles of coast line comprising his Parish. The story of a life of self-sacrificing labour undertaken for Christ's sake cannot fail to inspire those who read it, and as such this little book Is sure of a welcome from those who believe that work of the character of that being carried out by Dr. Grenfell represents the most precious wealth the earth has to offer. FRANCIS H. Woon. SecretarJ. Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen Bridge House, 181 Queen Victoria Street, London, E.C. Contenh P.lP INTRODUCTORY NOTE 11 I. DR. GRENFELL'S ANCESTRY AND EARLY HISTORY 15 u. THE LABRADOR PENINSULA . 31 111. ESKIMO RACE AND CUSTOMS . 45 IV. PIONEERING ENTERPRliB . 62 v. THE FISHER FOLK OP LAIRADOa . 71 VI. ROMANTIC SEA VOYAGES • . 92 vu. SIMPLE LIFE·STORI;ES AND TRAGEDIES . • log vm. DR. GRENFELL AND LITTLE CHILDREN .. • IIg IX. SALVATION BY REINDEER • 133 x. ACHIEVEMENT AND EXPANSION • • 141 XI. GRENFELL AND MOODY . • 151 XII. LITERARY ACTIVITIES AND DEPUTATION VISITS • 161 XIII. HONOURS AND THE KAN • 168 Introductory Note The age of romance in Missions ls by no means passing away. Heroes on the field are as numerous to-day, if not more so, than at any period since the dawn of the missionary enterprise over a century ago. To this company Dr. Grenfell of Labrador belongs, to whose unremitting and unwearying labours is due the marvellous work established in that wild and desolate region under the aegis of the Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen. The narrative of this effort to raise humanity almost reads like a romance taken from the pages of modem fiction. At every point in a remarkable life-story relating to the up­ lifting of a lost and degraded people, the Doctor makes very strong claim upon the admiration of his fellow men. He is unquestionably the embodiment of a type of heroic manhood at once courageous, resourceful, vigilant, pitying, for the sake of the human wreckage on Labrador's rugged shores. What wonder that be is altogether regarded as the greatest man who has hitherto appeared in Labrador. His attractive personality bas at intervals been out­ lined by admirers. Here is a picture of the Doctor, finely depicted and characterized by singular veracity from an American pen. "Of Grenfell," the writer observes, "there is a striking difference between the first look and the second. Thick hair streaked with iron-grey just above the temples, no particul&r shade elsewhere; a ragged moustache a.lso I2 INTRODUCTORY NOTE threaded with grey ; skin roughly tanned, though not con­ cealing a delicate underglow of health ; a not particularly stylish sack suit of English tweeds ; a half reserved manner remotely suggesting shyness; a quiet, almost awkward way of speech-all this is commonplace. "But there's something more,-eyes especially, which looking through rather narrow windows, hold their own in their place most steadily, bespeaking a soul behind them in full command. And there's poise in the figure of the man-an upstanding straightness which is not in the slightest self-assertive but perfectly independent. There's frankness and wholeness and wholesomeness-you feel them more every minute. The commonplace is there truly enough-and all perfectly genuine, but the uncommon is there too-like a fabric of honest all-wool homespun warp with a woof of purple and fine linen run through it." This is the portraiture of Grenfell-an Oxford man, Doctor of Medicine, now a companion of St. Michael and St. George, in recognition of exceptional medical mission service, out on that iron-bound and extraordinarily fascinating coast where during the last fifteen years he has spent his life in the teeth of fierce Labrador storms, exploring unvoyaged shores, charting hidden reefs, giving himself strenuously to the cry of perishing humanity building hospitals and opening co-operative stores, for the rescue of fisherman and native from the grasp of un­ scrupulous harpies crushing the life out of them. On these lines, ministering to a scattered people in the highest things as effectively as on the physical plane. And the Doctor says, with a touch of irrepressible, bubbling humour, he has had " bully good fun " while he has been doing it. Students of literature tell us that some five hundred years gone, a true Englishman, Langland, by name, wrote ID • The Vision of Piers Plowman,'" of whole heart cometh INTRODUCTORY NOTE 13 hope," perceiving that if people were to be hopeful, and live bright, happy lives, they must be enabled to live under whole-hearted conditions. In the same characteristic vein, and with corresponding outlook, Dr. Grenfell has risked everything, labouring for the salvation of Labrador's population. When one thinks of it'there is nothing more amazing in the history of the man than the risks he has faced. He is, we must acknowledge, a splendid fellow, if only for that. ln the Labrador world, as in all other worlds, we owe everything to "ventures of faith," which the spiritual heroes of the Grenfell stamp courageously take. A gifted surgeon, a fearless navigator, who runs within a hair's breadth of his life every week, a knight-errant enthused with the passion for his fellowkind throbbing in the greatest souls, Dr. Grenfell ranks among the heroes of his time on Labrador's rocks and shoals, booming with the trumpeting of tempests, and echoing the sea-mew's weird call. It would seem that to an admirable degree Grenfell answers Browning's portrait of the chivalrous soul: "One whu never turned 'his back, but marched breast forward, Never doubted clouds would break; Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baflled to fight better, Sleep to wake." In the present volume we propose to let journal, letter, and diary chiefly narrate Grenfell's story, by which the reader may obtain a better view of this modern Missionary's career in the far lands of Labrador, face to face with the rigours of an Arctic world, the haunt of ice floe, and of sudden fog, blinding storm, stark, jagged coast, and nor'easters. MAP ILLUSTRATING MISSION STATIONS, HOSPITALS, AND CO-OPERATIVE STORES FOR WORK AMONG THE DEBP SEA FISHERMEN OF LABRADOR, Grenfell of Labrador CHAPTER I Oa. G'tENFBLL'S ANCBSTRY AND EA'tLY HISTO ..Y 11 Of all the influences which go to make a man what he is, heredity and early environment are probably those which count for most. Education, in the technical sense, at school or college, and the religious or other stimulus given by apparently casual contact with some teacher or preacher in later life, are often accepted as the starting point or the determining factor of a strongly marked career. This is specially the case in autobiographies. On the other hand a detached biographer will be disposed to track the stream that he is studying, not merely back to its apparent source, but rather to the anterior origin of its supply.

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