FROZEN NORTH.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 54, Issue 192, 28 May 1934, Page 8

FROZEN NORTH.

HARDSHIPS FOR WOMEN. A Yorkshire girl lay on a stretcher for three clays suffering from appendicitis, while a dog team rushed her oyer the snow and ice to a town 150 miles away. She is better now, and wants to go back. The Yorkshire girl is Miss Florence Hirst, a farmer's daughter, of Treeton, Rotherham. She and four other white • people have been working for four years as missionaries and teachers among the Eskimos and Red Indians at (Shingle Point, on the North Canadian coast. The other four are Canadians. "I never want to return to civilisation," Miss Hirst said. "We were sent cut from Toronto to open a mis•sioni post 'somewhere along the north coast.' We sailed doAvn the Mackenzie River in the only few weeks of summer that exist up there, and arrived at last tat Shingle Point. The long winter soon came on us. • "We found a group of deserted huts which had once been used by the old Hudson Bay 'fur traders and we turned these into homes and school rooms. On one side lay hundreds of miles of uninhabited, snow-covered land; on the other the frozen sea. One could almost feel the White Silence. Eskimos and Indians came from as far away as 1000 miles, bringing their children to our school. They pay us in furs when the season is good. v "Wolves and bears trouble us little. Several times my face was frozen when I went outside during the winter, but I soon grew used to that. Yes, I am anxious to.go back."