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.
