CONCERNING FRIENDS IN THE TAR NORTH.

Otago Witness, Issue 2817, 4 March 1908, Page 72

CONCERNING FRIENDS IN THE TAR NORTH.

For some months I have beeu longing to remind my "Guild of Unknown Friends " of the needs of those other unknown friends away in the far north of the Labrador coast. Yet T refrained. I am not fond of aeking either for myself or others, though I count giving one of the lovelieet things on earth. Moreover, it beemed to me that during the last months of the Old Year there were so many claims urged either for charity or culture— the V.M.C.A., the Art GaHery, the China Famine Fund, and the Hooken Gift Fund. We seemed to have a varied enough list of benefactions to appeal to every taster Also, I take it, charity begins at home, if we desire to be just, yet it must by no means end there if Aye wish to be generous. And while I let " I would not wait upon I would," the very time 1 had set in my own mind as a fair and fitting one on which to ask your practical help once more for the work of Dr Wilfred Grenfell has crept upon me almost unawares : and Easter draws on apace. It is almost as though my own brooding desire, and perhaps the generous sympathy of some other friends who have reminded me of their unflagging interest, have drawn from the management of Dr Grenfell's funds the fery appeal direct and urgent, to us which is surely all we need. Here is the letter I have received. Read it, and think what you can do (before Easter Monday, April 19) by way of responding to the appeal : — Dear Friend, — One year ago you were kind enough to send itdol to the Grenfell Association for the purpose of earrving 1 on the beneficent work in which Dr Grenfell and his co-workers are engaged amon^ the deep-eea fishermen of Labrador and Newfoundland. That work is steadily growing, especially along the lines of hospital and medical 6ervice. "We are also introducing this year a herd of reindeer, to supply milk, fresh meat, and better transportation. A home for fishermen and sailors ie being built in Sfc. John's, Newfoundland, where the men may have good, wholesome entertainment when in that city, where they come in great numbers to dispose of their "oatch" and buy their supplies. At present only the lowest places are open to them. All this ie ir.aking heavy demands upon our resources, and I am writing you now to ask \ r you cannot see your way clear to renew or poesibly to increase your gift of lost year. The enclosed letter from our president, Dr Henry van Dyke, speaks in strong terme of the value of the work done. Hoping that you may again have the privilege of assisting in the maintenance of this good work, which has been rendered possible only by the generosity o£ friends like yourself, and that I may nave the pleasure of hearing from you very soon, — I remain, very truly yours, Willis E. Loxjgee, Secretary. Princeton, New Jersey. My dear Mr Lougee, — Your letter of February 8 at hand. I regard the work that Dr Grenfell is doing in Labrador as one of the most simple, direct and vital applications of the Gospel of Christ to human needs that modern times have seen. Ho has gone out into that wild country as a n«.an seeking for hidden treasure ; not the treasure of gold mines and diamond fields, but the treasure of an opportunity to serve humanity and to make known the ; fulnese of the ealvation which Christ brings jto man's body, mind and heart. He has i discovered among the people who live on I thoeo desolate snores of the northern tea I and among the fishermen who ply their I perilous work up thoro a wonderful chance Ito do good. They had been living for many I ! years, not only without churches or j preachers, but also without a physician to care for them when they were sick or wounded, and without a firm friend and counsellor to save them from the consequences of thair own ignorance and from the rapacity of evil men who ministered to their vices, preyed upon their simplicity and kept Ihein (through a false /system of ; trade) in a state of debt which amounted i ! almost to slavery. For 14 years Dr Gren- ! fell has thrown himself into the work of I helping these people in Christ's name and in Chiist's way. He has healed the sick, clothed the nak^d, delivered the captive, ! and taught the people of his thousantlmile parish to- understand the love of God through the love of man. He has built four hospitals, and established five co-opera-tive stores where the fishermen get fair prices for their fish, and buy their supplies at reasonable rates; given surgical and medical care to thousands of patients ; and! preached the good news of Christianity from house to house and from ship to ship. Dr Grenfell is the "real thing," and any money whioh is given to his mission will be used in a wise, practical and direct way for tho help and the comfort of a. brave, lovable set of people who heed and gratefully receive the ministry which this strong and. devoted young doctor is Riving to them.— With best regards, faithfully yours, HSNBT VAN I)TKB. Old friends tract readers "well remember very clearly the story of Dr Wilfred Gren-

! fell's splendid work among the fishermeit ' of the lonely Labrador coast, but the circle of readers, like every other circle under the sun, is always changing. Old friends drop out — sadly enough we roies them : new friends step in— gladly enough we welcome them. For the new friends and the new readers a brief resume of Dr Grenfell's life work shall b© given. When the young doctor— little more than a boy — went to Labrador in 1892, he found himself the only physician upon 2000 miles of coast — and such coast ! Here is his own description of it, taken from some extracts from his diary recently published in the Montreal Weekly Witness and sent to roe by Lavender: — This coast i 6 itself a parable — hostile and vindictive it appears, with its 6udden storms, uncharted and tmlijrhted reefs and headlands, its eternxl ice and trackless fogs. Yet, faoed boldly and handled wisely, it gives way, as obstacles of every kind do to imperious man. It is like many animals whom Nature endows only with pretentious^dresses to frighten enemies by their hideous I appearance and resemblance to animals still more dangerous. As some butterflies when resting on a. leaf with their wings closed look so like a large owl that its small bird enemies conjure up the body of a monster hidden in the foliage and depart in fear— and hunger. The ice and storm have been made to cleave up these mighty cliffs till every 10 miles from Hudson Straits to the Gulf a good harbour awaits the mariner who knows" it. The fogs and lack of lights have trained the fisherman's powers o£ observation and memory till he can almost verify his opinion about a breaking rock or the foot of some fog-hidden beetling cliff, by the echo that comes back to his foghorn, and hie skill in finding a harbour in the darkness becomes so supernatural as almost literally to make the hair of the casual visitor lift hia hat off, an. involuntary tribute to the ability and daring. Some years ago the population of the Labrador coast and of the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, together with, the summer fishermen from southern ports' numbered about 30,000. For the medical succour and help and the spiritual comfort and sympathy of these 30,000 souls earning a scanty living amid hardships and] perils totally impossible for us to realise, iDr Grenfell offered himself. Since then, . by an almost superhuman courage, a marvellous power of organisation, and a sympathy as intense as it is modest, Dr Grenfell has done these things: — He has not only built and maintained three hospitals, gathered about him a staff of two resident doctors and three trained nurses, patrolled that 2000 miles of frozen and desolate coast, bristling with perils, . in his hospital ship the Strathcona, But he has accomplished these further labour* of love : opened co-operative stores, started industries to furnish employment for those out of work, cared for the orphans of fishermen lost at sea, and practically become the guardian and helper of the entire population of the Labrador. . Dr Grenfell is, before all things, a' practical man, and it is thus that he has commanded] the respect of the fishermen, whose whole life is a struggle with that most practical question of all : how to obtain the means of existence. He is a brave man, undaunted by pteril, never counting the cost of hardship in the service of those to whom he- has devoted his life, and his courage, together with his constant faith in the power and goodness of God — however manifested, — has done more than a million sermons could! have done to render him the spiritual hope and comfort of the Labrador. Let mo bring that unfriendly coast before your mental vision in the words of Norman Duncan, one of Dr Grenfeli's etaunchesfe helpers. "The Labrador" ie a forbidding coast, indeed — naked, rugged, desolate, lying 1 | (sombre in a mist. It is of weather-worn grey rock, broken at intervals by long ribs of black. In .parts it is low and rugged, slowly rising, by way of bare slopes and starved* forest, to broken mountain ranges, which lie bold and blue in the inland waste. Elsewhere it rears from the edge of the eea in stupendous cliffs and lofty, rugged hills. There is no inviting stretoh of shore the length of it — no sandy beach, no line of shingle, no grassy bank ; the sea washes a thousand! miles of ragged rock. Were it not for tho harboure — innumerable, and snugly sheltered from the winds and ground swell of the open — there would be no navigating the waters of that region. ... It is an evil coast, ill-charted where charted at all; ! some part of the present-day map ie based ! upon the guesswork of eighteenth-century, navigators. The ekippers of the fishing craft/ ' sail by guess and hearsay — by recollection I and old rhymes ; a heroic- voyage, ventured every 6ummer to earn a scanty living. In the thousand harbours of Newfoundland, whence in the spring the fleet sail north — 25,000 stout fellows in their little shipsthere sounds a call to this adventure. Granted only that the heart of the man ia true, he heare a call — persuasive, insistent, inevitable ; it i 6 real ac a bugle's note. » . . The man who has sailed his schooner in the marvellous harbours of the Far North — tho man who has set eyes on the dark, dumpy little women who wear sealskin trousers and carry their babies on their backe — he is the man. > , . . In. the early spring — when the sunlight is yellow and the warm winds blow, and the melting snow drips over the cliffs and runs in little rivulets from tho barren hills, in the harbours of all the coast the great fleet is made ready for the long adventure. . , . there is hope in