Then followed a fine Sunday morning. It was intensely interesting to note the attitude which my crew could take toward my decision to work all day after morning prayers. We talked briefly over the emphasis laid by the four Evangelists on Christ's attitude toward the day of rest, and what it might mean, if we allowed a rare fine day to go by, to that long section of coast which we had not yet this year visited, and which might thus miss the opportunity of seeing a doctor before Christmas. As since this war has begun I have felt that the Christ whom I wanted to follow would be in France, so now I felt that the Christ of my ideal would go ashore and get those deer in spite of the great breach of convention which it would mean for a "Mission" doctor to work in any way, except in the many ways he has to work every Sunday of his life. The whole crew followed me when I went ashore, saying that they shared my view—all except the mate, who spent his Sunday in bed. Idleness is not rest to some natures, either to body or mind, and when at night we all turned in at ten o'clock, wet through—for it had rained in the evening—and tired out, we were able to say our prayers with just as light hearts, feeling that we had put sixty-eight deer aboard, as if we had enjoyed that foretaste of what some still believe to be the rest of heaven. Rest for our souls we certainly had, and to some of us that is the rest which God calls His own and intends shall be ours also. When later I spoke to some young men about this, it seemed to them a Chestertonian paradox, that we should actually hold a Sunday service and then go forth to render it. They thought that Sunday prayers had to do only with the escaping the consequences of one's sins.
I still believe that we were absolutely right in our theory of the introduction of the deer into this North country, and that we shall be justified in it by posterity. That these thousands of miles, now useless to men, will be grazed over one day by countless herds of deer affording milk, meat, clothing, transport, and pleasure to the human race, is certain. They do not by any means destroy the land over which they rove. On the contrary, the deep ruts made by their feet, like the ponies' feet in Iceland, serve to drain the surface water and dry the land. The kicking and pawing of the moss-covered ground with their spade-like feet tear it up, level it, and cut off the dense moss and creeping plants, bring the sub-soil to the top, and over the whole the big herd spreads a good covering of manure.
Reindeer-trodden barrens, after a short rest, yield more grass and cattle food than ever before. No domesticated animal can tolerate the cold of this country and find sustenance for itself as can the deer. It can live as far north as the musk-ox. Peary found reindeer in plenty on the shores of the polar sea. The great barren lands of Canada, from Hudson Bay north of Chesterfield Inlet away to the west, carry tens of thousands of wild caribou. Mr. J.B. Tyrrell's photographs show armies of them advancing; the stags with their lordly horns are seen passing close to the camera in serried ranks that seem to have no end.
Our own experiment is far from being a failure. It has been a success, even if only the corpse is left in Newfoundland. We have proved conclusively that the deer can live, thrive, and multiply on the otherwise perfectly valueless areas of this North country, and furnish a rapidly increasing domesticated "raw material" for a food and clothing supply to its people.
CHAPTER XVIII[ToC]
THE ICE-PAN ADVENTURE
On Easter Sunday, the 21st of April, 1908, it was still winter with us in northern Newfoundland. Everything was covered with snow and ice. I was returning to the hospital after morning service, when a boy came running over with the news that a large team of dogs had come from sixty miles to the southward to get a doctor to come at once on an urgent case. A fortnight before we had operated on a young man for acute bone disease of the thigh, but when he was sent home the people had allowed the wound to close, and poisoned matter had accumulated. As it seemed probable that we should have to remove the leg, there was no time to be lost, and I therefore started immediately, the messengers following me with their team.