A Labrador Doctor | Page 2

192
THREE OF THE DOCTOR'S DOGS 198
A KOMATIK JOURNEY 202
THE FIRST COÖPERATIVE STORE 218
ST. ANTHONY 226
INSIDE THE ORPHANAGE 250
FISH ON THE FLAKES 272
DRYING THE SEINES 272
A PART OF THE REINDEER HERD 296
REINDEER TEAMS MEETING A DOG TEAM 296
A SPRING SCENE AT ST. ANTHONY 304
DOG RACE AT ST. ANTHONY 304
ICEBERGS 320
COMMODORE PEARY ON HIS WAY BACK FROM THE POLE,
1909 340
THE INSTITUTE, ST. JOHN'S 354
DOG TRAVEL 368
THE LABRADOR DOCTOR IN WINTER 406
ENTRANCE TO ST. ANTHONY HARBOUR 418

A LABRADOR DOCTOR
CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS
To be born on the 28th of February is not altogether without its
compensations. It affords a subject of conversation when you are asked
to put your name in birthday books. It is evident that many people
suppose it to be almost an intrusion to appear on that day. However, it
was perfectly satisfactory to me so long as it was not the 29th. As a boy,
that was all for which I cared. Still, I used at times to be oppressed by
the danger, so narrowly missed, of growing up with undue deliberation.
The event occurred in 1865 in Parkgate, near Chester, England, whither
my parents had moved to enable my father to take over the school of
his uncle. I was always told that what might be called boisterous
weather signalled my arrival. Experience has since shown me that that
need not be considered a particularly ominous portent in the winter
season on the Sands of Dee.
It is fortunate that the selection of our birthplace is not left to ourselves.
It would most certainly be one of those small decisions which would
later add to the things over which we worry. I can see how it would
have acted in my own case. For my paternal forbears are really of
Cornish extraction--a corner of our little Island to which attaches all the
romantic aroma of the men, who, in defence of England, "swept the
Spanish Main," and so long successfully singed the Bang of Spain's
beard, men whose exploits never fail to stir the best blood of
Englishmen, and among whom my direct ancestors had the privilege of
playing no undistinguished part. On the other hand, my visits thither
have--romance aside--convinced me that the restricted foreshore and
the precipitous cliffs are a handicap to the development of youth,
compared with the broad expanses of tempting sands, which are after
all associated with another kinsman, whose songs have helped to make
them famous, Charles Kingsley.
My mother was born in India, her father being a colonel of many

campaigns, and her brother an engineer officer in charge during the
siege of Lucknow till relieved by Sir Henry Havelock. At the first
Delhi Durbar no less than forty-eight of my cousins met, all being
officers either of the Indian military or civil service.
To the modern progressive mind the wide sands are a stumbling-block.
Silting up with the years, they have closed the river to navigation, and
converted our once famous Roman city of Chester into a sleepy,
second-rate market-town. The great flood of commerce from the New
World sweeps contemptuously past our estuary, and finds its
clearing-house under the eternal, assertive smoke clouds which
camouflage the miles of throbbing docks and slums called
Liverpool--little more than a dozen miles distant. But the heather-clad
hills of Heswall, and the old red sandstone ridge, which form the
ancient borough of the "Hundred of Wirral," afford an efficient shelter
from the insistent taint of out-of-the-worldness.
Every inch of the Sands of Dee were dear to me. I learned to know their
every bank and gutter. Away beyond them there was a mystery in the
blue hills of the Welsh shore, only cut off from us children in reality by
the narrow, rapid water of the channel we called the Deep. Yet they
seemed so high and so far away. The people there spoke a different
language from ours, and all their instincts seemed diverse. Our humble
neighbours lived by the seafaring genius which we ourselves loved so
much. They made their living from the fisheries of the river mouth; and
scores of times we children would slip away, and spend the day and
night with them in their boats.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM MOSTYN HOUSE, THE AUTHOR'S
BIRTHPLACE, PARKGATE, CHESHIRE]
While I was still quite a small boy, a terrible blizzard struck the estuary
while the boats were out, and for twenty-four hours one of the fishing
craft was missing. Only a lad of sixteen was in charge of her--a boy
whom we knew, and with whom we had often sailed. All my family
were away from home at the time except myself; and I can still
remember the thrill I experienced when, as representative