THE MISSIONS 245 



well able to judge, as he spent much time visiting per- 

 sonally from place to place when patrolling with his ships 

 in the western part of the North Atlantic. He writes : 



" On our visit round the island we met with sights 

 enough to sicken one, and we felt ashamed to think that 

 these poor creatures were British subjects like ourselves. 

 On part of Labrador the people were actually starving last 

 winter, owing to a bad fishing season, and many would 

 have starved altogether had it not been for a steamer 

 wrecked on their coast, loaded with bullock and flour." 



The same observer, writing in 1881, says: 



" These poor people, ground down as they are by the 

 detestable ' truck system,' live and die hopelessly in debt, 

 living from hand to mouth without a shilling to call their 

 own. Possibly education may in time awaken them to a 

 sense of their degradation, but at present there seems no 

 remedy for this evil. A bad season throws hundreds of 

 these unfortunates upon the government, and no less than 

 $100,000 is paid out annually in pauper relief among a 

 total population of 180,000." 



On my own first cruise along the Labrador coast, coming 

 straight from a happier land, I was deeply impressed with 

 the ruling terror of poverty and semi-starvation implied 

 by the conditions then prevailing. The nakedness of the 

 people was an insistent and deplorable feature ever facing 

 the doctor as his calling made him a witness of the mean 

 material, miserable flannelet or cotton, within the reach of 

 a folk living in a subarctic climate. The wretched monot- 

 ony of their cheap (truly the most expensive) foods ; the 

 small, bare, squalid huts; the ignorance and apathy of 

 men and women; the absolute neglect of the crudest sanita- 



