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Vikings of to-day : or, Life and medical work among the fishermen of Labrador / by Wilfred T. Grenfell ; illustrated from original photographs.

1895; Linguagem: Inglês

10.5962/bhl.title.19983

2377-7583

Wilfred Thomason Grenfell,

Indigenous Studies and Ecology

to Deep Sea Fishermen.AT the present time near to the close of the nineteenth century we are being constantly reminded, with somewhat unpleasant persistence, that the human race is degenerating and that the changes of decay are most marked among the most civilised people.It is among the young men especially that these un- welcome signs of the times are assumed to be the more noticeable.It is claimed that the splendid physique and the heroic courage of the British race are both deteriorating, and that those who seek for the time of noble deeds and sturdy hearts must turn back to the days of Elizabeth to the stirring times of Drake and Raleigh.There is said to be no longer a field for that pluck and daring, or for that determination and persistency, which at one period made the name of the British famous throughout the world.It would be idle, in this place, to inquire into the substance of these meanings and regrets, and it would be reasonable perhaps to allow that there may be some teal or apparent element of truth in these lamentations over the man of the present.Be this as it may, it will be agreeable to those who are most concerned in these forebodings to turn to the record contained in this volume, while those who view with some disgust the fashion- able youth of the day, with his many effeminacies and affectations, will find in the pages which follow some wholesome relief to their distaste.Dr. Grenfell's narrative will take the reader away from the heated, unnatural and debilitating atmosphere of the modern city, from the innervated crowd, from the pampered, self-indulgent colonies of men and women who make up fashionable society, and x PREFACE will carry him to a lonely land where all conventionalities vanish, and where man is brought into contact with the simplest elements of life and with the rudimentary problems of how to avoid starva- tion and ward off death from cold.The present volume deals with a land of desolation, with a country hard, relentless, unsympathetic and cruel, where, among fogs and icebergs, a handful of determined men are trying to hold their own against hostile surroundings and to earn a living in defiance of dreary odds.VIKINGS OF TO-DAY accurate, graphic, and authoritative words of the Encyclopedia Britannica."Labrador, properly so called," says the Encyclo- pedia, " is the peninsular portion of North America, bounded by the Gulf of St. Lawrence, the North At- lantic, Hudson Straits, Hudson Bay, and vaguely defined towards the S.W. by Rupert's River, Mistas- sini River, and Bersiamits River.Its greatest length is T,IOO miles, its greatest breadth 700 miles.The area is approximately 420,000 square miles, that is, as large as the British Isles, France, and Austria.The coast from Blanc Sablon, a spot 85 miles up the Straits of Belle Isle, to Cape Chidley at the en- trance to Hudson Bay straits, and all the off-lying islands, with the country inland about 70 miles, are under the government of Newfoundland.The rest is part of the province of Quebec, under Canadian rule."Sterile and forbidding it lies among fogs and ice- bergs, famous only besides for dogs and cod."God made this country last," says an old navigator." He had no other view in end than to throw together here the refuse of His materials as of no use to mankind."" As a permanent abode of civilized man," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, " Labrador is, on the whole, one of the most uninviting spots on the face of the earth.A vast tableland occupies much of the in- terior.This plateau, says Professor Hind, is pre- eminently sterile, and where the country is not THE COUNTRY 9 two former are rapidly dying out, while among the latter it is only where a settler has grown-up sons to work with him, and a good supply of stock in boats, nets, traps and guns to help him, that he can make anything approaching to what we in England should consider a respectable living.Even with these helps, and with steady, hard work, and with sound health, he seldom can hope to lay up store against times of misfortune.True in England the poor often see hard times, and have to face occasionally poverty and hunger.Moreover, as Richard Whitbourne, that plucky British sea-dog, says, 1"It hath beene in some winters so hard frozen, aboue London bridge near the court, that the tenderest faire ladies and gentlewomen that are in any part of the world, who have beheld it, and great numbers of people, have there sported on the ice many dayes, and have felt it colder there, than men doe here, that live in Newfoundland."Yet we must take into consideration that here absolute want is the exception, there the rule.