rth to remain until the end of September catching cod, for
here are the finest cod fishing grounds in the world.

In 1892 there were nearly twenty-five thousand Newfoundlanders on this
fleet. Doctor Grenfell's mission was to aid and assist these deep sea
fishermen. In those days there was no doctor with the fleet and none
on the whole coast, and any one taken seriously ill or badly injured
usually died for lack of medical or surgical care. Of course, Grenfell
was also to help the people who lived on the coast, that is, the
native inhabitants, who needed him. This service he was giving free.

At this season there is more fog than sunshine in those northern
latitudes. It settles in a dense pall over the sea, adding to the
dangers of navigation. Now the fog was so thick that they could
scarcely see the length of the vessel. On the fourth day out the fog
lifted for a brief time, and Cape Bauld the northeasterly point of
Newfoundland Island, showed his grim old head, as if to bid them
goodbye and to wish them good luck "down on The Labrador." Then they
were again swallowed by the fog and plunged into the rough seas where
the Straits of Belle Isle meet the wide ocean.

No more land was seen, as they ploughed northward through the fog,
until August 4th. This was a Thursday. Like the lifting of a curtain
on a stage the fog, all at once, melted away, to reveal a scene of
marvellous though rugged beauty. As though touched by a hand of magic,
the atmosphere, for so many days dank and thick, suddenly became
brilliantly clear and transparent, and the sun shone bright and warm.

Off the port bow lay The Labrador, the great silent peninsula of the
north. Doctor Grenfell turned to it with a thrill. Here was the land
he had come so far to see! Here he would find the people to whom he
was to devote his life work!

There before him lay her scattered islands, her grim and rocky
headlands and beetling cliffs, and beyond the islands, rolling away
into illimitable blue distances her seared hills and the vast unknown
region of her interior, whose mysterious secrets she had kept locked
within her heart through all time. Back there, hidden from the world,
were numberless lakes and rivers and mountains that no white man had
ever seen.

[Illustration: "SAILS NORTH TO REMAIN UNTIL THE END OF SUMMER CATCHING
COD"]

The sea rose and fell in a lazy swell. Not far away a school of whales
were playing, now and again spouting geysers of water hig