REINDEER FOR LABRADOR 257 
over, rickets, scurvy, multiple neuritis, blindness from 
corneal ulcerations in marasmic children, and other diseases 
of insufficient nourishment were rife among a people en- 
joying a bracing, pure air, undefiled by human or other 
exhalations, and in a country entirely free of endemic 
diseases. There were no milk-producing animals on all 
our coasts except a couple of cows and a handful of goats. 
The trading system and the people’s poverty put even the 
tinned article out of the question. We were wont to see 
ill-fed mothers, without milk to suckle their babes, chewing 
hard bread,.and thus after predigesting it in their own mouths, 
trying to maintain life in their wizened offspring, till they 
should attain the age at which nature furnishes them with 
the salivary glands, and enables them to convert “loaf” 
into the assimilable sugars for themselves. 
Milk, milk, milk, seemed to us the great cry from the 
coast. It seemed impossible to supply it from either 
sheep or cows or goats on any large scale, since every 
family is obliged to maintain at least half a dozen dogs 
for hauling fuel and for travelling, and thus every village 
had a throng of fifty to one hundred of these hungry, half- 
fed beasts. The dogs, even at long distances from their 
own homes, go hunting exactly like wolves in large packs, 
and have killed the cattle as fast as it has been introduced. 
Thus it seemed impossible that we could maintain cattle 
and dogs together, and our medical staff had been compelled 
to do the best it could with a scanty supply of tinned milk. 
In any case, cows and goats need feeding in winter, and 
imported hay cost us $40 aton. A cow eats two tons, even 
on a ration diet during our long winter, and it would 
cost us therefore twice as much as the cow was worth 
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