Before the Eskimo boys are very old, they are taught to repair tents, use an oar, cast a line, and handle a gun. In addition, they are taught how to drive a team of dogs across snow and ice, for dog-sleds in that far-off country take the place of trains, trams, and hansom-cabs. These dogs, however, are very treacherous. In appearance they are exactly like wolves, and are often as ferocious. Any strange animal is at once put to death by them. Domestic animals and farmyard stock are soon killed and devoured. At certain seasons of the year, too, they will snarl and snap at their owners. Quite recently a family of three were reported to have been killed outright by these savage brutes. It is expected that when the deer have been trained to do the work of these dogs, an effort will be made to exterminate the entire breed. It is astonishing, however, the amount of work the Eskimo dogs will accomplish. A good team will travel from six to ten miles an hour, and cover a distance of sixty miles in the day without showing fatigue. Even at the end of such a day’s work, the team find no difficulty in despatching a fox or a wolf should one dare to cross their path.
In the month of May, when the sealing season is practically over, the salmon-nets are prepared, and away go the families with their belongings to the salmon areas along the well-known rivers. Salmon are so abundant that hundreds are caught in one week. Great skill is sometimes shown by the Eskimo boys in the manipulation of their nets, for unless they were watched and handled cautiously they would be torn to pieces or carried away entirely by the masses of ice that go rumbling down the rivers at the approach of warmer weather.
In the springtime the boys accompany their fathers on sealing expeditions. Off they go, jumping from ice-pan to ice-pan with their gaff for killing their victims. The boy has a keen eye, and if an old seal pops his head above water, a bullet goes through it in a moment. One method of capturing the seals is to build a barricade of ice, behind which the hunters hide. As the seals appear above water they are shot, and then harpooned, before they have a chance to sink.
The man who is destined to bring about the salvation of these people, spiritually, intellectually, and commercially, is Dr. W. T. Grenfell. To record all that this great man has accomplished, with his experiences on land and sea, would be to fill a book many times larger than the one in which these few references to him and his work are now recorded.
Dr. Grenfell is descended from an old Devonshire stock. He was born on the banks of the Dee, close to the Irish Sea, and he cannot remember the time when he did not love the roar of the ocean, and longed for romantic adventure in the far-off land towards which the billows rolled. His youth was spent at Oxford, where he became a popular figure in athletic circles. A surprising incident decided his future for him. One evening during his medical course he went by chance into the Tabernacle in East London, just at the time when Mr. Moody was conducting evangelistic services in England. Here he received a conviction that his own religious life was a humbug. He wrestled with that conviction until it led him to decide that he would go to Labrador as a missionary under the auspices of the Royal National Mission to Deep-Sea Fishermen. In 1892 he took charge of the little steamer Alert, and began his work among the people of Northern Newfoundland. If you would like to know more of this self-denying man’s work, and to read of his hairbreadth escapes from death, you should read his book entitled “Vikings of To-day.”
Dr. Grenfell has made a study of the Eskimo dog, the animal that has played such a part in the doctor’s missionary work. One of his experiences runs thus:
“Modesty is a virtue of which the Eskimo dog is seldom guilty. I was visiting one day a bedridden patient. As the outer door opened, a fragrant scent as of a dinner preparing was wafted outward. Suddenly an avalanche swept me off my legs, and a pack of dogs, whisking the stew-pot off the fire, began to fight savagely over its contents, the more so as each having burnt his nose in the boiling liquid attributed his affliction to his neighbour. Meanwhile, the house filling with steam and Eskimo imprecations, the latter rendered forcible by long harpoon handles, made me almost sorry I had called.
“The ‘trail’ is usually over the frozen sea, the land being too uneven. Good dogs will cover from 70 to 100 miles in a day. When starting in the morning, the snow is covered with little icicles, formed by the midday sun melting the frozen surface. As this is apt to make the feet of the dogs bleed, they are shod with a bag of sealskin, tied round the ankle. Three small holes are cut for the claws. A pup shod for the first time holds up his paws in the air alternately, but once he learns to appreciate the fact that shoes save his feet from being cut, though he will always eat any ordinary piece of skin, such as a kavak or a skin boot, he rarely eats his own shoes. They do, however, bite at and eat the harness, especially of the dog in front of them. Mr. Young tells of a big dog which, though apparently always hard at work, never seemed to get tired like the rest. It always seemed to strain at its trace, and kept looking round, apparently for the driver’s approval. His suspicions, however, were aroused, and one day, cutting loose the trace, he fastened it by a single thread to the komatik. Sure enough, the dog strained and worked as hard as ever, but it never broke a single thread!
“Ploughing is a humdrum task which these dogs do not enjoy. The only way it can be done is for one man to march solemnly in front dragging a seal’s flipper, while another man has to shove and guide the plough.
“These dogs are fearless in retrieving birds by the seashore.