By the time we reached Montreal, our funds were getting low, but Dr. Bobardt insisted that we must engage the best accommodations, even if it prevented our travelling farther west. The result was that reporters insisted on interviewing him as to the purpose of an Australian coming to Montreal; and I was startled to see a long account which he had jokingly given them published in the morning papers, stating that his purpose was to materialize the All Red Line and arrange closer relations between Australia and Canada. According to his report my object was to inspect my ranch in Alberta. Life to him, whether on the Labrador Coast, in an English school, or in his Australian home, was one perpetual picnic.
Naturally, our most important interview was with Lord Strathcona. He was President of the Hudson Bay Company, the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and the Bank of Montreal. As a poor Scotch lad named Donald Smith he had lived for thirteen years of his early life in Labrador. There he had found a wife and there his daughter was born. From the very first he was thoroughly interested in our work, and all through the years until his death in 1914 his support was maintained, so that at the very time he died we were actually due to visit him the following month at Knelsworth.
We hired the best hall and advertised Sir Donald as our chairman. To save expense Dr. Bobardt acted in the ticket-box. When Sir Donald came along, not having seen him previously, he insisted on collecting fifty cents from him as from the rest. When Sir Donald strongly protested that he was our chairman, the shrewd young doctor merely replied that several others before him had made the same remark. Every one in the city knew Sir Donald; and when the matter was explained to him in the greenroom, he was thoroughly pleased with the business-like attitude of the Mission. As we had never seen Canada he insisted that we must take a holiday and visit as far west as British Columbia. All of this he not only arranged freely for us, but even saw to such details as that we should ride on the engine through the Rocky Mountains, and be entertained at his home called "Silver Heights" while in Winnipeg. It was during this trip that I visited "Grenfell Town," a queer little place called after Pascoe Grenfell, of the Bank of England. The marvel of the place to me was the thousands and thousands of acres of splendid farmland on which no one lived. I promised that I would send the hotel-keeper the Grenfell crest.
Lord Strathcona later presented the Mission with a fine little steamer, the Sir Donald, purchased and equipped at his expense through the Committee in Montreal.
We went back to England very well satisfied with our work. Dr. Bobardt left me and entered the Navy, while I returned the following year and steamed the new boat from Montreal down the St. Lawrence River and the Straits to Battle Harbour. There the Albert, which had sailed again from England with doctors, nurses, and supplies, was to meet me. We had made a fine voyage, visiting all along the coast as we journeyed, and had turned in from sea through the last "run," or passage between islands. We had polished our brass-work, cleaned up our decks, hoisted our flags, all that we might make a triumphant entry on our arrival a few minutes later—when suddenly, Buff—Bur-r—Buff, we rose, staggered, and fell over on a horrible submerged shoal. Our side was gored, our propeller and shaft gone, our keel badly splintered, and the ship left high and dry. When we realized our mistake and the dreadful position into which we had put ourselves, we rowed ashore to the nearest island, walked three or four miles over hill and bog, and from there got a fisherman with a boat to put us over to Battle Harbour Island. The good ship Albert lay at anchor in the harbour. Our new colleagues and old friends were all impatiently waiting to see our fine new steamer speed in with all her flags up—when, instead, two bedraggled-looking tramps, crestfallen almost to weeping, literally crept aboard.
Sympathy took the form of deeds and a crowd at once went round in boats with a museum of implements. Soon they had her off, and our plucky schooner took her in tow all the three hundred miles to the nearest dry-dock at St. John's.
Meanwhile Sir Thomas Roddick, of Montreal, an old Newfoundlander, had presented us with a splendid twenty-foot jolly-boat, rigged with lug-sail and centre-boom. In this I cruised north to Eskimo Bay, harbouring at nights if possible, getting a local pilot when I could, and once being taken bodily on board, craft and all, by a big friendly fishing schooner. It proved a most profitable summer. I was so dependent on the settlers and fishermen for food and hospitality that I learned to know them as would otherwise have been impossible. Far the best road to a seaman's heart is to let him do something for you. Our impressions of a landscape, like our estimates of character, all depend on our viewpoint. Fresh from the more momentous problems of great cities, the interests and misunderstandings of small isolated places bias the mind and make one censorious and resentful. But from the position of a tight corner, that of needing help and hospitality from entire strangers, one learns how large are the hearts and homes of those who live next to Nature. If I knew the Labrador people before (and among such I include the Hudson Bay traders and the Newfoundland fishermen), that summer made me love them. I could not help feeling how much more they gladly and freely did for me than I should have dreamed of doing for them had they come along to my house in London. I have sailed the seas in ocean greyhounds and in floating palaces and in steam yachts, but better than any other I love to dwell on the memories of that summer, cruising the Labrador in a twenty-footer.
That year I was late returning South. Progress is slow in the fall of the year along the Labrador in a boat of that capacity. I was weather-bound, with the snow already on the ground in Square Island Harbour. The fishery of the settlers had been very poor. The traders coming South had passed them by. There were eight months of winter ahead, and practically no supplies for the dozen families of the little village. I shall never forget the confidence of the patriarch of the settlement, Uncle Jim, whose guest I was. The fact that we were without butter, and that "sweetness" (molasses) was low, was scarcely even noticed. I remember as if it were yesterday the stimulating tang of the frosty air and the racy problem of the open sea yet to be covered. The bag of birds which we had captured when we had driven in for shelter from the storm made our dry-diet supper sweeter than any Delmonico ten-course dinner, because we had wrested it ourselves from the reluctant environment. Then last of all came the general meeting in Uncle Jim's house at night to ask the Lord to open the windows of heaven for the benefit of the pathetic little group on the island. Next morning the first thing on which our eyes lighted was the belated trader, actually driven north again by the storm, anchored right in the harbour. Of course Uncle Jim knew that it would be there. Personally, I did not expect her, so can claim no credit for the telepathy; but if faith ever did work wonders it was on that occasion. There were laughing faces and happy hearts as we said good-bye, when my dainty little lady spread her wings to a fair breeze a day or so later.
The gallant little Sir Donald did herself every credit the following year, and we not only visited the coast as far north as Cape Chidley, but explored the narrow channel which runs through the land into Ungava Bay, and places Cape Chidley itself on a detached island.
There were a great many fishing schooners far north that season, and the keen pleasures of exploring a truly marvellous coast, practically uncharted and unknown, were redeemed from the reproach of selfishness by the numerous opportunities for service to one's fellow men.