to the Atlantic.

It was, however, with our hearts somewhere near our mouths that we
made an attempt to get through this year, for we knew nothing of the
depth, except that the Eskimos had told us that large icebergs drove
through at times. We could steam nine knots, and we essayed to cover
the tide, which we found against us, as we neared the narrowest part,
which is scarcely one hundred yards wide. The current carried us
bodily astern, however, and glad enough we were to drive stern
foremost into a cove on one side and find thirteen fathoms of water to
hold on in till the tide should turn. When at last it did turn, and
got under way, it fairly took us in its teeth, and we shot through, an
impotent plaything on the heaving bosom of the resistless waters. We
returned safely, with a site selected and a fair chart of the "Tickle"
(Grenfell Tickle).

When winter closed in, I arranged for an old friend, a clerk of the
Hudson Bay Company, to stay with me at St. Anthony, and once more we
settled down in rooms hired in a cottage. We had a driver, a team of
dogs, and an arrangement with a paternal Government to help out by
making an allowance of twenty-five cents for medicine for such
patients as could not themselves pay that amount, and in those days
the number was quite large.

When early spring came the hospital question revived. An expedition
into the woods was arranged, and with a hundred men and thrice as many
dogs, we camped in the trees, and at the end of the fortnight came
home hauling behind us the material for a thirty-six by thirty-six
hospital. Being entirely new to us it proved a very happy experience.
We were quartermasters and general providers. Our kitchen was dug down
in thick woods through six feet of snow, and our main reliance was on
boiled "doughboys"--the "sinkers" among which, with a slice of fat
pork or a basin of bird soup, were as popular as lobster a la Newburg
at Delmonico's or Sherry's.

The next summer we had trouble with a form of selfishness which I have
always heartily hated--the liquor traffic. Suppose we do allow that a
man has a right to degrade his body with swallowing alcohol, he
certainly has no more right to lure others to their destruction for
money than a filibuster has a right to spend his money in gunpowder
and shoot his fellow countrymen. To our great chagrin we found that an
important neighbour near one of our hospitals was selling intoxicants
to the people--girls and men. One