ne, now a
gunshot wound or an axe cut with severed tendons to adjust, now
pneumonia, when often in solitary and unlearned homes, we would
ourselves do the nursing and especially the cooking, as that art for
the sick is entirely uncultivated on the coast.

The following winter I lectured in England and then crossed in the
early spring to the United States and lectured both there and in
Canada, receiving great kindness and much help for the work.

As I have stated in the previous chapter we had raised, largely
through the generosity of Lord Strathcona, the money for a suitable
little hospital steamer, and she had been built to our design in
England. I had steamed her round to our fitting yard at Great
Yarmouth, and had her fitted for our work before sailing. While I was
in America, my old Newfoundland crew went across and fetched her over,
so that June found us once more cruising the Labrador coast.

While working with the large fleet of schooners, which at that time
fished in August and September from Cape Mugford to Hudson Bay
Straits, I visited as usual the five stations of the Moravian
Brethren. They were looking for a new place to put a station, and at
their request I took their representative to Cape Chidley in the
Strathcona.

This northern end of Labrador is extremely interesting to cruise. The
great Appalachian Mountain Range runs out here right to the water
edge, and forms a marvellous sea-front of embattled cliffs from two
thousand to three thousand feet in height. The narrow passages which
here and there run far into the mountains, and represent old valleys
scooped out by ice action, are dominated all along by frowning peaks,
whose pointed summits betray the fact that they overtopped the ice
stream in the glacial age. The sharp precipices and weather-worn sides
are picked out by coloured lichens, and tiny cold-proof Arctic plants,
and these, with the deep blue water and unknown vistas that keep
constantly opening up as one steams along the almost fathomless
fjords, afford a fascination beyond measure.

Once before in the Sir Donald we had tried to navigate the narrow run
that cuts off the island on which Cape Chidley stands from the
mainland of Labrador, but had missed the way among the many openings,
and only noted from a hilltop the course we should have taken, by the
boiling current which we saw below, whose vicious whirlpools like
miniature maelstroms poured like a dashing torrent from Ungava Bay
in