Each of us helped himself sparingly to the cat meat. There was bread, but no butter, and there was hot tea with black molasses for sweetening.
"Take more o' th' meat now! Help yourselves! Don't be afraid of un," our hospitable host urged, and we did help ourselves again, for it was good.
Whenever we passed within hailing distance of a cabin, we had to stop for a "cup o' hot tea, whatever." Otherwise the people would have felt sorely hurt. We seldom found more elaborate meals than bread, tea and molasses, rarely butter, and of course never any vegetables.
We soon discovered that we could not pay the head of the family for our entertainment, but where there were children we left money with the mother with which to buy something for the little ones, which doubtless would be clothing or provisions for the family. If there were no children we left the money on the table or somewhere where it surely would be discovered after our departure.
I remember one of this fine breed of men well. I met him on this journey, and he once drove dog team for me—Uncle Willie Wolfrey. Doctor Grenfell says of him:
"Uncle Willie isn't a scholar, a social light, or a capitalist magnate, but all the same ten minutes' visit to Uncle Willie Wolfrey is worth five dollars of any man's investment."
It requires a lot of physical energy for any man to tramp the trails day after day through a frigid, snow-covered wilderness, and months of it at a stretch. It is a big job for a young and hearty man, and a tremendous one for a man of Uncle Willie's years. And it is a man's job, too, to handle a boat in all weather, in calm and in gale, in clear and in fog, sixteen to twenty hours a day, and the fisherman's day is seldom shorter than that. The fish must be caught when they are there to be caught, and they must be split and salted the day they are caught, and then there's the work of spreading them on the "flakes," and turning them, and piling and covering them when rain threatens.
A cataract began to form on Uncle Willie's eyes, and every day he could see just a little less plainly than the day before. The prospects were that he would soon be blind, and without his eyesight he could neither hunt nor fish.
But with his growing age and misfortune Uncle Willie was never a whit less cheerful. He had to earn his living and he kept at his work.
"'Tis the way of the Lard," said he. "He's blessed me with fine health all my life, and kept the house warm, and we've always had a bit to eat, whatever. The Lard has been wonderful good to us, and I'll never be complainin'."