Fodder of all kinds is very scarce in the volcanic tufa of which all
that land consists, and any moment that one stopped was always devoted
by our ponies to grubbing for blades of grass in the holes. On our
return to the ship the crew could not help noticing that the skipper
for many days ceased to patronize the lockers or any other seat, and
soon they were rejoicing that for some reason he was unable to sit
down at all. He explained it by saying that his ponies ate so much
lava that it stuck out under their skins, and I myself recall feeling
inclined to agree with him.

The journey from Lake Forest to Labrador would have been a tedious
one, but by good fortune a friend from New York had arranged to come
and visit the coast in his steam yacht, the Enchantress, and was good
enough to pick me up at Bras d'Or. Dr. Alexander Graham Bell, who had
previously shown me much kindness, permitted us to rendezvous at his
house, and for a second time I enjoyed seeing some of the experiments
of his most versatile brain. His aeroplanes, telephones, and other
inventions were all intensely interesting, but among his other lines
of work the effort to develop a race of sheep, which had litters just
as pigs do, interested me most.

Francis Sayre, whom I had heard win the prize at Williams with his
valedictory speech, was again to be my summer secretary. On our
arrival at St. Anthony we found a great deal going on. The fame as a
surgeon of my colleague, Dr. John Mason Little, had spread so widely
that St. Anthony Hospital would no longer hold the patients who sought
assistance at it. Fifty would arrive on a single mail boat. They were
dumped down on the little wharf, having been landed in small punts
from the steamer, as in those days we had no proper dock to which the
boats could come. The little waiting-room in the hospital at night
resembled nothing so much as a newly opened sardine tin; and to cater
for the waiting patients was a Sisyphean task without the Hercules.
Through the instrumentality of Dr. Little's sister a fund of ten
thousand dollars was raised to double the size of the hospital, and
the work of building was begun on my return. Although the capacity was
greatly increased thereby we have really been unable ever to make our
building what it ought to be to meet the problem. The first part,
constructed of green lumber hauled from the woods, and other wings
added at different periods of growth, the endeavour to blast out
sui