Down North and Up Along 
tell him that her husband had finally become 
totally blind. She was not begging for sym- 
pathy nor asking for alms. All she wanted 
was to speak to us and receive a sympathetic 
touch of the hand. These people, seeing no 
one, expect nothing but the inexorable working 
out of their lives by such means as lie about 
them. We found that this woman and her 
husband had only what she could earn by the 
labour of her hands, and what that was can be 
imagined when one considers the impossibihty 
of getting a living here even by the hard work 
of men's hands. We astonished her by a gift 
which though small must have seemed to her 
like succour dropped from the skies, and we 
went back to the Half Way House filled with 
a sense of the misery and courage of the people 
of Neils Harbour. We had there seen more 
smiles, more cheerfulness and cordiality, than 
anywhere else in our journey through Cape 
North. 
It is a question of race temperament, and 
the subject is a very wonderful one when one 
stops to consider it. 
272 
