The daily morning journal and courier., 1905-04-15
ARCTIC SURGERY.
Esquimaus, Have wonderful Fac


 EsquimausJ Have Wonderful Fac ulty of Recovery. Since 1889 it has been my fortune to live among deep sea fishermen" says Dr. Wilfred Grenfell, writing in lLeslie's Monthly about his life in Lab-
 rador. The constant perils and great Ihardships of their lives and the lives of the fisherfolk along the coast are brought home to us every year by new tales of suffering and bravery. The ex- perience of one fisherman we, knew is typical of what happens only too fre- quently in that country. This man, wishing to go south for the winter, started in his small fishing boat, with his wife, four children, a servant girl and his fishing partner. Scarcely had they left when a furious gale of, wind sprang up. The naainsail and jib, with the mast, were all blown over the side, and the boat was driven before the wind. Three days and three nights they drove off into the Atlantic. On the third day the wind veered, and they were able to put up a small fore sail they had saved and drag in the direction of the land. Two more ten- rible days, and at last, when the boat was quite unmanageable they found the land close under their lee. Their condition was seen just before they drove ashore and a rescue attempted, but too late to save their boat. All their lives, however, were saved by the indomitable perseverance of the half dozen settlers. Instead of being south of where they left, they were a hundred and fifty miles north, and, in- deed, were in Labrador. There was no chance to leave so late in the season, and there they had to stay till the following summer, fed by the kindness of their poor neighbors and dead to all their friends for at least six months.
 "A similar accident to one of our English fishing vessels left the crew of ten men on the south coast of Ice land all one winter. When they came back in the following spring by the first possible boat, not only had the insurance on all their lives been paid and mostly spent, but one mans wife had married again. Gales in these regions in winter are often terribly severe. The little new church built here where I am winter ingnow was afew years ago blown clean away. Even the pews, the pulpit and the communion table were all blown into the sea-. ss. =. '' 'J.-s :: r.
 Few fishermen can swim. You see, we has enough O the water without goin' to bother wi it when we are ashore,' man said to me only the other day. Yet this very man had fallen overheard in the open sea no less then four times, and had been saved on one accession only by catch ing the line thrown him in his teeth and holding on till he was hauled aboard. His hands were too numbed, to be of any use Still this fact does net deter them from facing the water 'In an open bay in Labrador lives one solitary settler. In the spring of the year, when the ice was just breaking up, the mans two lads were out on the bay ice after seals, when all of a sudden it gave way and the lads fell through. The father, seeing it from the shore, did not hesitate, but, sezing a fishing line, hastily fastened one end round his body and giving the other end to his daughter to hold he ran out to the hole through which they had fallen. He jumped in- to the water, actually went down and fetched up the bodies, too late, alas
 however, to restore life to them after that cold water.
 Early in the fall the arm of the sea just north of our little hospital was frozen over enough to allow dog trains to travel over it. In the early morn ing two men started off to cross it on komatik, to cut firewood on the far side. AS they rounded headland the whole of the team fell in through the