"We crossed the Straits of Belle Isle once more, homeward bound. Old
Jacques Cartier, searching for an Eldorado, found Labrador, and in
disgust called it the 'Land of Cain.' A century and a half afterward
Lieutenant Roger Curtis wrote of it as a 'country formed of frightful
mountains, and unfruitful valleys, a prodigious heap of barren rock';
and George Cartwright, in his gossipy journal, summed up his
impressions after five and twenty years on the coast. He said, 'God
created this country last of all, and threw together there the refuse
of his materials as of no use to mankind.'
"We have learned at last the vital fact that Nature has set apart her
own picture galleries where men may resort if for a time they would
forget human contrivances. Such a wilderness is Labrador, a kind of
mental and moral sanitarium. The beautiful is but the visible splendor
of the true. The enjoyment of a visit to the coast may consist not
alone in the impressions of the scenery; there may be added the deeper
pleasure of reading out the history of noble landscapes, the
sculptured monuments of elemental strife and revolutions of distant
ages."
CHAPTER VIII
LECTURING AND CRUISING
We had now been coming for some two years to the coast, and the
problem was assuming larger proportions than I felt the Society at
home ought to be called on to finance. It seemed advisable, therefore,
to try and raise money in southern Newfoundland and Canada. So under
the wing of the most famous seal and fish killer, Captain Samuel
Blandford, I next visited and lectured in St. John's, Harbour Grace,
and Carbonear.
The towns in Newfoundland are not large. Its sectarian schools and the
strong denominational feeling between the churches so greatly divide
the people that united efforts for the Kingdom of God were extremely
rare before the war. Even now there is no Y.M.C.A. or Y.W.C.A. in the
Colony. The Boys' Brigade, which we initiated our first year, divided
as it grew in importance, into the Church Lads Brigade, the Catholic
Cadet Corps, and the Methodist Guards.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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