TENT LIFE 



rents in the net must be mended; and, with one 

 thing and another, the men are busy enough, and 

 are quite willing to leave the women to split and 

 salt the trout. Some of the families are splendid 

 fisher-folk ; one little man calmly answered " Forty 

 barrels" when I asked him how many trout he 

 generally managed to get in a season. 



I had a little trout net of my own in Okak Bay, 

 just opposite the hospital, and I could often see by 

 the commotion in the water whether there were any 

 fish in the net. I usually did the fisherman's work 

 myself when there were only a few fish. But if a 

 strong tide came and brought twenty or thirty fish, 

 my hands refused to do it; after half-an-hour's 

 dabbling in the icy water my fingers were numb and 

 my wrists used to ache with the cold, and I had to 

 call an Eskimo boy to finish the job. Eskimo hands 

 are made for cold work ; ice and water are very 

 ordinary things for them to touch and, once again, 

 I cannot but feel that the Eskimo is the very man 

 for the Labrador life. 



The village seemed very desolate while the people 

 were away at their trouting and sealing places ; there 

 were only the workpeople about the store and Mission 

 premises to give the place a touch of life ; and during 

 the daytime, while they were all at work, it seemed 

 like some deserted village of a bygone generation. 

 The windows were boarded up, doors were locked 

 or fastened with tags of rope, and only the savage 

 mother-dogs, that nursed their broods of puppies 

 under the doorsteps, witnessed to the fact that these 

 huts, looking so tumble-down now that the snow 

 had melted away from them and had washed the 



packing of moss out of the crevices, were, after all, 



248 



