156 Report of the Brown-Harvard Expedition. 



a fine steamer recently given to the mission largely through 

 the generosity of Lord Strathcona, of Canada, who was him- 

 self once an agent of the Hudson's Bay Company in Labra- 

 dor. In this steamer Dr. Grenfell patrols the coast of New- 

 foundland and Labrador during the summer, carrying aid to 

 all in need of his services, and transporting to the shore hos- 

 pitals the cases that require it. During the winter navigation 

 is impossible, but the hospitals are kept open and a doctor 

 from them travels by dog sledge about the country. About 

 a thousand cases, counting both in and out patients, have 

 been cared for in the two hospitals each year, and another 

 thousand on the steamer. Last year the number was 801 on 

 shore and 1,072 on the ship, together with 150 by aid of a 

 launch. Numbers like these show how great and indis- 

 pensable a blessing this service is to fishermen, settlers, and 

 natives. 



In another way Dr. Grenfell gives promise of greatly 

 benefiting these people. Realizing their unfortunate slavery 

 to the traders and the unhappy effect of this hopeless loss of 



on the passage. She is designed to act under the management of the 

 Royal National Mission to Deep Sea Fishermen as a floating hospital, 

 moving from place to place along the bleak coast of Labrador. No medical 

 man dwells anywhere along that vast coast line, and its scattered people, 

 who amount to several thousand, have no skilled help in accident or illness, 

 except what this boat affords. The 'Strathcona' is admirably adapted 

 for her work. She is fitted with all the necessities for modern surgery, 

 including electric light and a fine X-ray instalment, so that in the fre- 

 quent accidents that a fishing and hunting life expose the people to they 

 may have the best assistance science can afford. In her first season, last 

 year, over a thousand people sought assistance on board her. The little 

 steamer lies up all winter in the ice, as the sea in these regions freezes 

 over from December to June. A doctor is kept there by the Mission in a 

 small hospital on a central part of the coast, and with his dogs and 

 sleigh he travels from settlement to settlement. The ship has now just 

 refitted and sailed for the coast." 



