Troop One of the Labrador | Page 9

fading in the growing light. A low mist hung over
The Jug, and beyond the haze lay the dark, heaving waters of Eskimo
Bay. In the distance beyond the Bay the high peaks of the Mealy
Mountains rose out of the gloom, white with snow and looming above
the dark forest at their base in cold and silent majesty. Behind the cabin

stretched the vast, mysterious, unbounded wilderness which held,
hidden in its unmeasured depths, rivers and lakes and mountains that no
man, save the wandering Indian, had ever looked upon--great solitudes
whose silence had remained unbroken through the ages.
"If some of those Boy Scouts could only see this!" exclaimed Doctor
Joe.
"'Twere fashioned by the Almighty for comfortable livin'," said
Thomas, who had called Margaret and the boys and come out
unobserved by Doctor Joe. "There's no better shelter on the coast, and
no better place for seals and salmon, with neighbours handy when we
wants to see un, and plenty o' room to stretch. 'Tis the finest I ever saw,
whatever."
"Yes, 'tis all of that," agreed Doctor Joe. "But I wasn't thinking now of
The Jug alone. I was thinking of the majestic grandeur of the whole
scene. I was enjoying the freedom from the noise and scramble, the dirt
and smoke and smudge of the city, with its piles upon piles of ugly
buildings, and never a breath of such pure air as this to be breathed. I
was thinking of these fine young chaps, the Boy Scouts I saw there,
who are trying to study God's big out-of-doors and must content
themselves with stingy little parks. It's the love of Nature that takes
them to the parks, and compared with this they have a poor substitute.
This is the world as God made it, with all its primordial beauty. We're
fortunate that circumstances placed us here, Thomas, and we should be
for ever thankful."
"I'm wonderin' now," observed Thomas, as he and Doctor Joe paced up
and down the gravelly beach, "why folks ever lives in such places as
you tells about. There's plenty o' room down here on The Labrador, and
plenty o' other places, I'm not doubtin', where they'd be free from the
crowds and dirt, and have plenty o' room to stretch, and live fine like
we lives."
"We're a thousand miles from a railway," said Doctor Joe. "Most of the
people in the cities wouldn't live a thousand paces from a railway if
they could help themselves. They take a car and ride if they've only half

a mile to go. They ride so much they've almost forgotten how to walk.
They like crowds. They'd be lonesome if they were away from them."
"'Tis strange, wonderful strange, how some folks lives," remarked
Thomas, quite astonished that any could prefer the city to his own big,
free Labrador. "When folks has enough to keep un busy they never gets
lonesome, and bein' idle is like wastin' a part of life. A man could never
be lonesome where there's plenty o' water and woods about. I always
finds jobs a-plenty to turn my hand to, and I has no time to feel
lonesome. And I never could live where I didn't have room enough to
stretch, whatever."
"That's it!" Doctor Joe spoke decisively. "Room enough to stretch mind
as well as body. Why, Thomas, I've often heard men say that they had
to 'kill time', and didn't know what to do with themselves for hours
together!"
"'Tis wicked and against the Lord's will," and Thomas shook his head.
"The Lord never wants folks to be idle or kill time. He fixes it so there's
a-plenty of useful things for everybody to do all the time, and they
wants to do un."
"'Tis the measure of a man's worth," remarked Doctor Joe. "The
worth-while man never has an hour to kill. The day hasn't hours enough
for him. It's the other kind that kill time--the sort that are not, and never
will be, of much account in the world."
They walked a little in silence, each busy with his own thoughts, when
Thomas remarked:
"The Lord has been wonderful good to me, Doctor Joe, givin' me three
as fine lads and as fine a lass as He ever gave a man. Then He saves the
little lad's eyes, when they were goin' blind, by sendin' you to cure un.
And when I were breakin' my leg and couldn't work He sends along
Indian Jake to go to the trails to hunt with David and Andy, and they
makes a fine hunt and keeps us out o' debt. And this summer we has as
fine a catch of salmon as ever we has, and we're through with un a
fortnight ahead of ever before, with all