Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-04-15

Since that time he had lain on his back with
| nothing but an oily rag over the wounds
! AS we went into his hut he held up the raw
| stumps piteously. Some inches of bone pro-
| truded from each wound. What could be
! done was done to relieve his agony, but the
poor fellow died OF exhaustion after OPP
GRAFTON on the stumpS. The night we were
| leaving the harbor it was dark and blow
| Ing as l clambered over the rocks at about
~ o CLOCK at night to signal for the boat.
There l found awaiting me the poor mans
WIFE. In a flood of tears she wruug my
hands gratefully till I. too. felt choking
sensation about the throat. There was
something so real in her sorrow. now left
still more lonely on that lonely coast
One day a white-haired fisherman came
| aboard the schooner Albert, which then was
the hospital ship. He was an old and feeble
man, with knotted hands and bent Shout
ders. He told uncomplainingly. very simply,
now his three sons had died that summer
from diphtheria. II buried them all the
same week, zur,' said he. my eldest was
but he couldn't swallow and we didn't
know to feed him. l tied a split her
ring around his throat-some say as that
be good, zur-but he starved to death be-
fore my eyes 1t be hard for us old folks
to get along now with no one to help me
with the nets. L be not SO young as 1 was,
zur.''
Seventeen times did Capt. Sam Blandford.
famous sealing captain, take injured and
sick men and women aboard his ship at
lonely harbors only to see them die. In
one small harbor Twenty-Five people died
from diphtheria. Not only were they with
out a doctor. but none of the folk in neigh
boring settlements dared to buy their fish
from them or visit them to carry them sup
plies.
The Winter Famines.
'In one harbor." says DR. Grenfell in one
of his reports, were two families quite
destitute. There was neither tea, molas-
ses nor flour in either house, and their
clothing was literally dropping to pieces,
while one boy was barefoot and the others
had boots tied to their feet with string to
keep the pieces together. If ever hunger
wrote it's name clearly on peoples faces it
was written on these peoples, the children
being pale and bloodless, the women bag
gard and careworn. The mother told me
in most pathetic way: Even the berries
will be covered deep in snow soon, and
then we have only starvation to look for
ward to- They had no flour to face the
winter and no means of obtaining any.
Neither family had seal, salmon or cod
nets or Irvine to braid any, and both men
showed me their shot pouches and powder
horns nearly empty. On returning to the
launch I found that the captain had given
his bag of biscuits to these people
In another hut, where three inches of
snow lay on the floor, he found the chill
dren trying to huddle under an old coun-
terpane and pair of mans trousers,
which was the only protection they had.
Seven children nearly naked We're found
food and no apparatus to kill fish except
a few hooks A man with consumption
was found with his wife and two small
boys. There was not a single flannel gar
ment among them, and they had barrel
of flour and two pounds of tea on which
they would have to subsist the entire win
ter.
And these people were facing a winter
in land where the thermometer falls to
so below zero, where ice and snow draw
an impenetrable covering over a rocky
land and a wicked sea. where air and wa
ter ard ground are alike dead, because not
even a goose or caribou can live there.
All four-footed things flee before the end
of October All winged things haste away
before the first great northern blasts. The
ice shuts in on the sea and no man can go
out for cod or seal.
Once a year the government OF New
foundland used to send out doctor, VINO
went up and down on the mail steamer
that the ship could make in the various
harbors. Sometimes it was only few
minutes.
How It Began.
Then. one night, something happened in
far-away London. young doctor wan
dered into a meeting hall and heard Moody,
the American revivalist He listened,
thought and decided. The first fruit of that
decision was a club house for the toughest
young citizens of the London slums, where
they were raised spiritually after they had
been knocked down many times physically,
through the medium of boxing gloves, with
the hard fists and the hard muscles of the
doctor behind them.
Next, he went forth ~on the sea for the
Royal National Mission to the Deep Sea
Fishermen, and there he cured, preached
and fought the floating rum shops that then