GRENFELL'S ESKIMOS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 24, 27 July 1929, Page 18

GRENFELL'S ESKIMOS

Last year an Eskimo boy carrying a baby arrived at St. Anthony, Newfoundland. He was 15, very thui, ana was coughing as he plodded along. Their mother had died sorao weeks before,^ and no one cared for the children. Tho boy had washed and dressed his baby sister ever since, and beged for food, and fed her. But he was not strong enough to keep up the fight. Luckily someone told him of a houso at St. Anthony where they were kind to motherless children, so he sot off from tho North to find it

Now lie looks on proudly white his dimpled brown sister is potted and spoiled by everybody about her. Their story had this happy ending because 37 years ago a young English doctor arrived as the first medical missionary on the coast of Labrador, the laud that faces ours across the wide Atlantic. Now Wilfred Grenfell is known all over tho world fox- the great work he Ims done for the poor and lonely people scattered along the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador. Ho has built hospitals and homes, organised industries to relieve poverty and established co-operative stores. By lecture tours and books he has raised money and roused the world's interest in tho needy folk of tho North.

There are now nine stations where the sick can go for help. Sometimes they can only send a message, and then a nurse or a doctor will set off. by boat or sledge to mend a broken limb or tend a case of beri-beri.

Much of the sickness in those regions comes from bad food; there are far too many cases of scurvy, beri-bcri, and rickets. It is no good telling people to eat plenty of fresh vegetables in those wintry lands, but cod-liver oil is plentiful, and tho Grenfell Association is slowly educating tho people to take it.

Among the patients are white men. Indians, and Eskimos; among tho

workers, undergraduates from Canadian or United States .universities, as well as ' those who givo their lives to the work. Think, for instance, of the nurse j sent to Conche for two years. Conehe is a tiny settlement, forty miles as the crow flies from tho mission headquarters. She lodges in a house where there is only one small stove to warm overybody, because coal is too costly to be bought, and wood has to be carried seven miles. Tho winter lasts six months, and the cold is so intense that it freezes all medicines. When the temperature is well below zero, ami a bitter wind is driving, a messenger will come to Couche from a liut 10" miles away, and nurse will sot off with hoi 11 dogs across the frozen harbour, or climb on skis tho snowy hills, to help a sick mother. Dr. Gvonfoil's helpers do more- than euro tho sick. They-find food and clothing and work for the needy, education for tho young, a homo for the- motherless, and work and equipment for tho crippled. Last year Britain provided about £7000 for this work, and over £2000 of that was earned by Sir Wilfred Grenfell's lectures. It seems not too much for so groat a human work.