x PREFACE 



will carry him to a lonely land where all conventionalities vanish, 

 and where man is brought into contact with the simplest elements 

 of life and with the rudimentary problems of how to avoid starva- 

 tion and ward off death from cold. 



The present volume deals with a land of desolation, with a 

 country hard, relentless, unsympathetic and cruel, where, among 

 fogs and icebergs, a handful of determined men are trying to hold 

 their own against hostile surroundings and to earn a living in 

 defiance of dreary odds. 



When the Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen resolved to send an 

 expedition to Labrador, it was evident that the man to go with 

 it was Grenfell. He was well known both at Oxford and in London 

 as a hardy athlete ; he was a skilled and able surgeon ; he was 

 profoundly interested in Mission work ; and the sea had for him 

 that magical attraction which a few centuries ago emptied nearly 

 every little cove and fishing hamlet in Cornwall and Devon of its 

 heartiest men, and carried them over the high seas to the ends of 

 the earth. 



Grenfell went, and the good work of the Mission was established 

 on the Labrador. It was no little matter to bring into the hard 

 and desperate life of the Labrador fishermen a touch of kindly and 

 practical sympathy from the old country. It was no little matter 

 to travel for many hundreds of miles along a grim, inhospitable 

 coast, where buoys and beacons are unknown and where there 

 is scarcely a bay or island which has not been the scene of some 

 lonely disaster. 



It will be seen from this book that the race of Vikings is not 

 yet extinct, on the one hand, and that on the other the spirit of 

 enterprise and daring is not yet lost to the English people, and 

 that the modern rover of the sea differs from his predecessor in 

 little save the motive of his expedition. 



Those who know how to value the comforts of an English 

 home, and who can appreciate the quiet content and the beauty of 

 an English village, will be induced by this book to feel no little 

 sympathy for those whose lives are cast among the dreary islands 

 and deserted bays of Labrador. 



FREDERICK TREVES. 



