Our increasing buildings being all of wood, and as the two largest
were full of either helpless sick people or an ever-increasing batch
of children, we wanted something safer than kerosene lamps to
illuminate the rooms. The people here had never seen electric light
"tamed," as it were, and to us it seemed almost too big a venture to
install a plant of our own. Home outfits were not common in those days
even in the States, and we feared in any case that we could not run it
regularly enough. No one except the head of the machine shop, a
Labrador boy and Pratt graduate, knew the first thing about
electricity, and he would not always be available.
However, with the help of friends we were able to purchase a hot-head
vertical engine to generate our current; for our near-by streams
freeze solid in winter. That engine has now been running for over ten
years, and has given us electricity in St. Anthony Hospital for
operating and X-ray work as well as all our lighting. Until he died,
it was run the greater part of the time by an Eskimo boy whom we had
brought down from the North Labrador, and who was convalescing from
empyema. The installation was efficiently done by a volunteer student
from the Pratt Institute, Mr. Hause.
On my lecture trip the previous winter a gentleman at whose house I
was a guest told me that when quite a youth he had fought in the Civil
War, been invalided home, and advised to take a sea voyage for his
health. He therefore took passage with some Gloucester fishermen and
set sail for the Labrador. The crew proved to be Southern
sympathizers, and one day, while my friend was ashore taking a walk,
the skipper slipped out and left him marooned. He had with him neither
money, spare clothing, nor anything else; and as British sympathies
were also with the South, he had many doubts as to how the settlers
would receive a penniless stranger and Northerner. So seeing his
schooner bound in an easterly direction, he started literally to run
along the shore, hoping that he might find where she went and catch
her again. Mile after mile he went, tearing through the "tuckamore" or
dense undergrowth of gnarled trees, climbing over high cliffs,
swimming or wading the innumerable rivers, skirting bays, and now and
again finding a short beach along which he could hurry. At night, wet,
dirty, tired, hungry, penniless, he came to a fisherman's cottage and
asked shelter and food. He explained that he was an American gentleman
taking a holiday, but hadn't a penny of money. It spoke well for the
people that they accepted his story. He told me that they both fed and
clothed him, and one kind-hearted man actually the next day gave him
some oilskin clothing and a sou'wester hat--costly articles "on
Labrador" in those days. So on and on and on he went, till at last
arriving at Red Bay he found his schooner at anchor calmly fishing. He
went aboard at once as if nothing had happened, and stayed there
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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