The Savannah morning news. (Savannah, Ga.) 1900-current, 1902-07-13
through the knee Joint. one IaparotomS

through the knee Joint, one Eaparotomy
and one gastrotomy.
What the condition of those patients
would have been in previous years may
be imagined from one case that Dr.
Grenfell found in hut far from other
human beings. As he entered the dark,
foul little place he saw a man who,
moaning piteously, held up two terri
BILE things. They were the stumps of his
| arms. He had shot off every part of
| them below the elbows while hunting
| seal two weeks before, and from that
time he had been lying on his back
with nothing over the awful wounds
| except an oily rag that fellow hunter
! had laid over them. The bones protrud-
| ed, and the necessary operation was
something to make men shrink, per-
formed, as it had to be, with few in
/ struments and hardly enough chloro-
form to do more than ease the poor
fellows worst pangs. Yet he bore it
manfully. Despite 1t all, it was too late
and he died that night
! They found an old woman who had a
tumor on the leg. They told her they
could put her to sleep while they oper-
ated. but she would not have it. The
next day DR.. Grenfell found five strong
men awaiting him. The woman had
| asked them to come and hold her, and
| all she asked was if she might bawl"
! She did, indeed, bawl, but within a few
/ minutes after the operation was over
she was laughing over it, and in ten
| days she was we'll.
From this time on until the winter
again sets in, beginning with the Sep
TENDER gales, the hospital ship will be
kept on the "go" steadily. She will
nave to face daily not only danger from
unknown waters and treacherous seas,
but the ever present menace of the
/ ice. For, as the fishing fleets begin to
| stream northward "at hazard year by
year" the icebergs begin to drift south
ward in ghostly columns. Many times
4 has the Strathcona been in imminent
/ peril. Once she was so locked in with
Ice and foes that she was invisible
among the encompassng blocks and
piles of it. Masses began to topple
over on her decks. Untold tons of it
| squeezed her keel. She escaped this
! and many other similar dangers and
went out to brave new ones unfalter-
ingly. For these are brave men in
deed that go out on the deep for the
Labrador. Medical Mission.
| And brave men are they whom she
goes out to help. Ground by poverty,
the Newfoundland fishermen have no
other means of finding even the most
miserable of livipgs than this OF hunt
ing the cod on the worst coast in the
world. AS soon as the ice is blown
from the coast by westerly winds they
sail eagerly north in every variety of
vessel. DR.. Grenfell in his Vikings of
To-day" describes this annual voyage
thus: .;2xsx,SI ID
Crowded Fleets of the Poor.
''They come in every variety of YES
sci, small and large, good, bad and in
different, mostly of the schooner type.
Besides the crew, which varies from
five to ten men with one or two wo-
men, most Newfoundland vessels bring
| d number of people called 'freighters.'
These are landed at various harbors
where they have left mud huts and
boats the previous year and where they
will fish all summer. These persons
cure their fish on the spot. Meanwhile
the vessel goes on farther north to
seek fish for herself. When they come
south again they call for the freight
ers,' who pay 25 cents for each hundred
weight of fish for their passage.
Besides the cargo of fish, casks OF
oil, nets, boats and general goods,
thirty, forty or fifty men and women
will be crowded into these small YES
! sells, at times with only room to lie
down in the hold between the deck and
the cargo. On one small schooner of
nineteen tons we counted thirty-four
|
many of whom have children with
them. often are very bad sailors.s AS
rule. they are not allowed on deck
except in port, and this voyage is a
i nightmare to most of them. They are
/ pillars of pluck. many of these women.
: They can handle an oar and sail a small
i, boat with the best, and among them
/ are Grace Darlings' only wanting an
, opportunity. They work chiefly at
| cleaning fish and keeping the huts for
| the men,, though some form parts of
! the fishing smack crews"
! DR.. Grenfell examined many of these
schooners and found such instances of
! schooner, nineteen men and sixteen
| day voyage; a nineteen ton schooner
| carrying twenty-eight men and fifteen
women; a fifty ton schooner with sew
! ing the measured cubic space allotted
to man, his wife, two other men and
a boy and girl, eight feet by six feet.
PitifuI Tales of Suffering.
There never has been a year when
a number of these vessels were not
| lost, and shocking stories are told on
the coast of the sufferings of women
| and children while drifting in the icy
waters, sometimes being afoat on bits
of wreckage for days among the ice
! foes before being rescued or finally
drowned.
Pitiful stories, too, are told of the
sufferings of the 'freighters" when ILL
ness or other misfortune incapacitates