A Visit to Newfoundland

by Mary Lydia Branch

The air at Channel is so crystal pure and bracing, that it seems as if one living there need never be ill or tired, but the water supply is poor and the wells are few and shallow. That is a drawback. The merchant has secured a good well, and another man has a cistern full of rain water which he filters, but most of the people depend on shallow wells. There is no depth of soil, and where there is soil without drainage it is boggy. There was a pretty house next the one where we stayed, with a broad, green yard, but the owner told me that all the earth had been brought in boat-loads from a river bank some miles away. Although there are such limitless forests in the interior, at Channel there are no trees except the postmaster’s willows, and that is why the people have to buy coal for fuel.

But the rocks, the air, the harbor, the sea, and the waves dashing in foam over the bar, yield a fine exhilaration and make one unwilling to leave Channel. The people are so friendly that it is easy to become personally acquainted with them. We were called “the Americans,” and everyone was ready to stop and talk with us and to invite us into their homes. My heart warms when I think of them. There was the day when we visited the Methodist school and saw a chalk line drawn on the floor before the toes of the class which came up to recite. After the recitation, the earnest young teacher asked us for speeches, so we paid for our pleasure. At the Church of England school we were much interested in the games which the children played on the rocks in recess.

I am convinced that we burden ourselves with too many luxuries. When we were calling on Jim Savery’s wife, whose house has only one room, with a loft above, where the family sleep, I glanced around and could not see that any actual necessity of life was lacking. There was a table and four home-made chairs, so that I could imagine the family at meals, or the mother sewing and the children studying their lessons. There was a good stove, with kettle and tins, a chest to keep clothes in, a few shelves in a corner, with notched paper and the best dishes on them, and in another corner a closet, which presumably held provisions. There was one lamp and a spinning wheel. A bright little girl of four swung on a chair-back watching us, and a tall boy stood in the doorway.

I wish that you could see Jim Savery’s wife! She might have stepped out from one of Millet’s best pictures. She is a tall, strong woman, with noble features, well browned, and carries herself grandly. She was carding soft, white masses of wool, and after that she began to spin, walking back and forth beside the wheel. She was not born in Channel. She told us she came from Codroy. She said Codroy was beautiful, with trees and gardens--different from Channel. She had been back once or twice to visit her folks there. In her calm, benevolent countenance there was not a trace of discontent, but I found myself wishing that she could go to Codroy once every year when gardens were in bloom.

When a little girl in Codroy, going to school, she used to like the poems in the Reader. I asked her if she could remember any of them, and stopping her wheel she stood by it there in that little room and repeated Wordsworth’s “We Are Seven.” Once or twice she faltered, and the boy in the doorway prompted her with the missing words.

If I go to Channel again I shall take as pretty a plate as I can find with me, to exchange with Mrs. Savery for one of hers. She has several white ones, each with a highly colored picture in the centre, and the one I desire is adorned with a figure dressed in bright red and blue, with these words printed below: “A Lady.”

Our gentle, care-worn landlady, Mrs. Arnold, won our respect and affection. Her pretty and ambitious daughter, Bessie, was assistant teacher in the Church of England school and the organist of the church on Sunday. Every Sunday the first officer of the “Bruce” came to spend the evening, part of the time singing hymns while Bessie played, and part of the time telling us tales of adventure such as we had never heard before.

One afternoon, when we came in from a long walk, expecting the usual supper of bread, tea and tart, we were greeted by the appetizing smell of fresh cod fried with onions. Two men had arrived to stay over night, waiting for the coast steamer, and we all had supper together. Those men told us the most interesting things. Mr. McDougal said when he began sealing he could not kill the first baby seal, because it cried so pitifully. He picked it up and carried it to the boat, where another man killed it. Sometimes, out in the ice, their hands would get so cold that they had to thrust them inside a freshly killed seal to warm them in its blood.

The other man, Captain Smith, had been to the same points on sea and shore where Captain Parry went so many years ago. Once he steered his ship through a narrow passage between two icebergs, and just as he got through the whole mass lifted and proved to be all one iceberg with two pinnacles.

He was present when Captain Buddington, of Groton, took possession of the “Resolute,” and felt chagrined because the American reached that vessel first. He knew the Esquimaux that Captain Buddington brought home, and himself once bought an Esquimau boy for a penknife, intending to bring him away, but repented at the last moment, thinking that the boy’s life would be shortened in our climate, and so set him ashore just before the ship started. The little Esquimau was sadly disappointed, and looked after them with longing eyes as they sailed away.