When John Burroughs writes about the birds, he brings with their life and song the feeling of the “perfect whole”—the open fields, the winding river, the bending sky, and the cool, fragrant woods. For he always gives, with the glimpses of nature that he culls, something of himself, something of his own clear-seeing, open-hearted appreciation.
The ten years spent in Washington were memorable not only for his first success as a nature writer, but also for the experiences brought through the Civil War and his friendship with the “good gray poet,” Walt Whitman. Years after, Mr. Burroughs said that his not having gone into the army was probably the greatest miss of his life. He went close enough to the firing-line on one occasion to hear “the ping of a rifle-bullet overhead, and the thud it makes when it strikes the ground.” Surely there should be enough of the spirit of his grandfather, who was one of Washington’s Valley Forge veterans, to make a soldier! How well he remembered the old Continental’s thrilling tales as they angled for trout side by side, graybeard and eager urchin of nine! How well he remembered the hair-raising stories of witches and ghosts that made many shadowy spots spook-ridden. He had learned to stand his ground in the woods at nightfall, and at the edge of the big black hole under the barn, and so to put to flight the specters before and the phantoms behind. But when, that night on the battle-field, he saw a company of blue-coated men hurrying toward a line of rifle-flashes that shone luridly against the horizon, he concluded that his grandfather had “emptied the family powder-horn” in those Revolutionary days, and that there was no real soldier stuff in the grandson.
If his failure to enlist in the army was the greatest miss of his life, his friendship with Whitman was its greatest gain. They took to the open road together, the best of boon companions, and Burroughs came to know the poet as he knew the birds. His essay “The Flight of the Eagle,” is one of the most spirited and heartfelt tributes that one great man ever paid another.
One should, however, hear Mr. Burroughs talk about the poet and watch his kindling enthusiasm. He had been teaching us how to roast shad under the ashes of our camp-fire one day when a chance remark put him in a reminiscent mood. We all felt that evening as if we had come in actual touch with the poet.
“You see,” our host concluded, “Whitman was himself his own best poem—a man, take him all in all. Do you remember how George Eliot said of Emerson, ‘He is the first man I have ever met’? Many people felt that way about Whitman.”
As I looked at Whitman’s friend I found myself thinking, “Surely here is a man, take him all in all—a man in whom the child’s heart, the youth’s vision, the poet’s enthusiasm, the scientist’s faithfulness, and the thinker’s insight, are all wonderfully blended.”
After the years in Washington, his work as a bank examiner made Mr. Burroughs seek a place for his home near New York City. The spot selected was a small farm on the Hudson, not far from Poughkeepsie, which he called Riverby. Here, in his eager delight over the planting of his roof-tree, he helped, so far as his time permitted, in the building, placing many of the rough-hewn stones himself. He tells with some relish a story of the Scotch mason, who, on looking back one evening as he was being ferried across to his home on the east shore of the river, saw, to his great anger another man at work on his job. Returning in fury to see why he had been supplanted, he surprised the owner himself in the act of putting in place some of the stones for the chimney.
“Weel, you are a hahndy malm!” he exclaimed.
The big river never appealed to Mr. Burroughs, however, as the friendly Pepacton and the other silver-clear streams where he had caught trout as a boy. It brought too close the noise of the world, the fever of getting and spending. Besides, its rising and ebbing tides, its big steamers and busy tugs, its shad and herring, were all strange to him; his boyhood home had known nothing of these things.
He built for himself a bark-covered retreat some two miles back from the river in a bowl-shaped hollow among the thickly wooded hills. “Slabsides,” as he called this human bird’s-nest, was a two-story shack of rough-hewn timbers.
“One of the greatest pleasures of life is to build a house for one’s self,” he said; “there is a peculiar satisfaction even in planting a tree from which you hope to eat the fruit or in the shade of which you hope to repose. But how much greater the pleasure in planting the roof-tree, the tree that bears the golden apples of hospitality. What is a man’s house but his nest, and why should it not be nest-like, both outside and in, snug and well-feathered and modeled by the heart within?”
Many guests climbed the steep, rocky trail and enjoyed the hospitality of this retreat, among others President Roosevelt and his wife. The naturalist, whom Colonel Roosevelt affectionately called “Oom John,” cooked the dinner himself, bringing milk and butter from his cave refrigerator, broiling the chicken, and preparing the lettuce, celery, and other vegetables which grew in the rich black mold of the hollow. As he prepared and served the meal with all the ease of a practised camper there was never a halt in the talk of these two great lovers of the outdoor world. If the poet-sage who deplored that
could have spent a day with John Burroughs, he would have found one man, at least, who never knew the tyranny of possessions, and so was never possessed by them. He is the type of the sane, happy human being who, while journeying through life, has taken time to live by the way. He knows the enchanting by-paths of existence, the friendly trails that wind over meadows and hills.
“I am in love with this world,” he says; “I have nestled lovingly in it. It has been home. I have tilled its soil, I have gathered its harvests, I have waited upon its seasons, and always have I reaped what I have sown. While I delved, I did not lose sight of the sky overhead. While I gathered its bread and meat for my body, I did not neglect to gather its bread and meat for my soul.”
Though the whole wide out-of-doors is home to John Burroughs, there is one spot that is more than any other the abiding-place of his affections. This is the country of his childhood in the Catskills. Here he spends his summers now at Woodchuck Lodge, a cottage about half a mile from the old homestead. Here he is happy in a way that he can be nowhere else. The woods and fields are flesh of his flesh, the mountains are father and mother to him.
A day with John Burroughs at Woodchuck Lodge will always seem torn from the calendar of ordinary living, a day apart, free, wholesome, and untouched by petty care. His world is indeed “so full of a number of things” that all who come within the spell of its serene content are “as happy as kings.”
As he makes whistles of young shoots of dogwood for his small grandson he tells of his school-days, when necessity taught his hand the cunning to make his own pens, slate-pencils, and ink-wells. “And they were a very good sort, too,” he adds. “Those were home-made days. I remember my homespun shirts, made of our own flax, yellow at first and as good as ever hair-shirt could have been in the way of scratching penance. All my playthings were home-made. How well I remember my trout-lines of braided horsehair, and the sawmill in the brook that actually cut up the turnips, apples, and cucumbers that I proudly fed it.”
“These, too, are home-made days of the best sort,” we think as we look about the rustic porch and chairs made of silvery birch, and at the silver-haired seer, surrounded by his grandchildren and the friends who gather about him with the happy feeling of being most entirely at home.
“You like my chairs with the bark on?” he says. “It’s a sort of hobby of mine to see how the natural forks and crooks and elbows which I discover in the saplings and tree-boles can be coaxed into serving my turn about the house, and I make it a point to use them as nearly as possible as they grow.”
We sit on the porch at his feet, watching the chipmunks frisk along the fences and the woodchucks creep furtively out of their holes. We do not speak for several long minutes, because we want to taste the quiet life he loves in the heart of the blue hills. We fancy that we can hear in the twitter of the tree-tops a clearly understood mingling of familiar voices, and that we feel in our hearts an answering echo that proves us truly akin to the creatures in feathers and fur.
“Home sights and sounds are best of all,” says our friend, as he gazes across at the purple shadows on Old Clump. “The sublime beauty of the Yosemite touched me with wonder and awe, but when I heard the robin’s note it touched my heart. Bright Angel Creek in the Grand Cañon found its way into the innermost recesses of my consciousness in the moment when it reminded me of the trout-stream at home.”
There is another pause, in which the silver-clear notes of the vesper-sparrow come to us with their “Peace, good will and good night.”
“I think I am something like a turtle in the way I love to poke about in narrow fields,” he adds whimsically; “but why should I rush hither and yon to see things when I can see constellations from my own door-step?”
And so it is indeed true that the Seer of Woodchuck Lodge can still find in a ramble among his own hills the land of wonder and beauty which he found as a boy when he followed the flash of the unknown bird, and in the glowing twilight of his years, with eyes that look into the heart and meaning of things, can, from his door-step, trace constellations undreamed of by day.
WHEN people meet Dr. Grenfell, the good doctor who braves the storms of the most dangerous of all sea-coasts and endures the hardships of arctic winters to care for the lonely fisherfolk of Labrador, they often ask, with pitying wonder:
“How do you manage it, Doctor, day in and day out through all the long months? It seems too much for any man to sacrifice himself as you do.”
“Don’t think for a moment that I’m a martyr,” replies Dr. Grenfell, a bit impatiently, “Why, I have a jolly good time of it! There’s nothing like a really good scrimmage to make a fellow sure that he’s alive, and glad of it. I learned that in my football days, and Labrador gives even better chances to know the joy of winning out in a tingling good tussle.”
Dr. Grenfell’s face, with the warm color glowing through the tan, his clear, steady eyes, and erect, vigorous form, all testify to his keen zest in the adventure of life. Ever since he could remember, he had, he told us, been in love with the thrill of strenuous action. When a small boy, he looked at the tiger-skin and other trophies of the hunt which his soldier uncles had sent from India, and dreamed of the time when he should learn the ways of the jungle at first hand.
He comes of a race of strong men. One uncle was a general who bore himself with distinguished gallantry in the Indian Mutiny at Lucknow when the little garrison of seventeen hundred men held the city for twelve weeks against a besieging force ten times as great. One of his father’s ancestors was Sir Richard Grenville, the hero of the Revenge, who, desperately struggling to save his wounded men, fought with his one ship against the whole Spanish fleet of fifty-three. Perhaps you remember Tennyson’s thrilling lines:
How these lines sang in his memory! Is it any wonder that the lad who heard this story as one among many thrilling tales of his own people should have felt that life was a splendid adventure?
As a boy in his home at Parkgate, near Chester, England, he was early accustomed to strenuous days in the open. He knew the stretches of sand-banks,—the famous “Sands of Dee,”—with their deep, intersecting “gutters” where many curlews, mallards, and other water-birds sought hiding. In his rocking home-made boat he explored from end to end the estuary into which the River Dee flowed, now and again hailing a fishing-smack for a tow home, if evening fell too soon, and sharing with the crew their supper of boiled shrimps. He seemed to know as by instinct the moods of the tides and storm-vexed waves, which little boats must learn to watch and circumvent. He became a lover, also, of wild nature—birds, animals, and plants—and of simple, vigorous men who lived rough, wholesome lives in the open.
Though he went from the boys’ school at Parkgate to Marlborough College, and later to Oxford, he had at this time no hint of the splendid adventures that life offers in the realm of mental and spiritual activities. Rugby football, in which he did his share to uphold the credit of the university, certainly made the most vital part of this chapter of his life. It was not until he took up the study of medicine at the London Hospital that he began to appreciate the value of knowledge “because it enables one to do things.”
There was one day of this study-time in London that made a change in the young doctor’s whole life. Partly out of curiosity, he followed a crowd in the poorer part of the city, into a large tent, where a religious meeting was being held. In a moment he came to realize that his religion had been just a matter of believing as he was taught, of conducting himself as did those about him, and of going to church on Sunday. It seemed that here, however, were men to whom religion was as real and practical a thing as the rudder is to a boat. All at once he saw what it would mean to have a strong guiding power in one’s life.
His mind seemed wonderfully set free. There were no longer conflicting aims, ideals, uncertainties, and misgivings. There was one purpose, one desire—to enter “the service that is perfect freedom,” the service of the King of Kings. Life was indeed a glorious adventure, whose meaning was plain and whose end sure.
How he enjoyed his class of unruly boys from the slums! Most people would have considered them hopeless “toughs.” He saw that they were just active boys, eager for life, who had been made what they were by unwholesome surroundings. “All they need is to get hold of the rudder and to feel the breath of healthy living in their faces,” he said. He fitted up one of his rooms with gymnasium material and taught the boys to box. He took them for outings into the country. When he saw the way they responded to this little chance for happy activity, he became one of the founders of the Lads’ Brigades and Lads’ Camps, which have done the same sort of good in England that the Boy Scouts organization has done in this country.
When he completed his medical course, the young doctor looked about for a field that would give chance for adventure and for service where a physician was really needed.
“I feel there is something for me besides hanging out my sign in a city where there are already doctors and to spare,” he said.
“Why don’t you see what can be done with a hospital-ship among the North Sea fishermen?” said Sir Frederick Treves, who was a great surgeon and a master mariner as well.
When Dr. Grenfell heard about how sick and injured men suffered for lack of care when on their long fishing-expeditions, he decided to fall in with this suggestion. He joined the staff of the Mission to Deep-sea Fishermen, and fitted out the first hospital-ship to the North Sea fisheries, which cruised about from the Bay of Biscay to Iceland, giving medical aid where it was often desperately needed.
When this work was well established, and other volunteers offered to take it up, Dr. Grenfell sought a new world of adventure. Hearing of the forlorn condition of the English-speaking settlers and natives on the remote shores of wind-swept Labrador, he resolved to fit out a hospital-ship and bring them what help he could. So began in 1892 Dr. Grenfell’s great work with his schooner Albert, in which he cruised about for three months and ministered to nine hundred patients, who, but for him, would have had no intelligent care.
Can you picture Labrador as something more than a pink patch on the cold part of the map? That strip of coast northwest of Newfoundland is a land of sheer cliffs broken by deep fiords, like much of Norway. Rocky islands and hidden reefs make the shores dangerous to ships in the terrific gales that are of frequent occurrence. But this forbidding, wreck-strewn land of wild, jutting crags has a weird beauty of its own. Picture it in winter when the deep snow has effaced all inequalities of surface and the dark spruces alone stand out against the gleaming whiteness. The fiords and streams are bound in an icy silence which holds the sea itself in thrall. Think of the colors of the moonlight on the ice, and the flaming splendor of the northern lights. Then picture it when summer has unloosed the land from the frozen spell. Mosses, brilliant lichens, and bright berries cover the rocky ground, the evergreens stand in unrivaled freshness, and gleaming trout and salmon dart out of the water, where great ice-bergs go floating by like monster fragments of the crystal city of the frost giants, borne along now by the arctic current to tell the world about the victory of the sun over the powers of cold in the far North.
When Dr. Grenfell sailed about in the Albert that first summer, the people thought he was some strange, big-hearted madman, who bore a charmed life. He seemed to know nothing and care nothing about foamy reefs, unfamiliar tides and currents, and treacherous winds. When it was impossible to put out in the schooner, he went in a whale-boat, which was worn out—honorably discharged from service—after a single season. The people who guarded the lives of their water-craft with jealous care shook their heads. Truly, the man must be mad. His boat was capsized, swamped, blown on the rocks, and once driven out to sea by a gale that terrified the crew of the solidly built mailboat. This time he was reported lost, but after a few days he appeared in the harbor of St. John’s, face aglow, and eyes fairly snapping with the zest of the conflict.
“Sure, the Lord must kape an eye on that man,” said an old skipper, devoutly.
It was often said of a gale on the Labrador coast, “That’s a wind that’ll bring Grenfell.” The doctor, impatient of delays, and feeling the same exhilaration in a good stiff breeze that a lover of horses feels in managing a spirited thoroughbred, never failed to make use of a wind that might help send him on his way.
What sort of people are these to whom Dr. Grenfell ministers? They are, as you might think, simple, hardy men, in whom ceaseless struggle against bleak conditions of life has developed strength of character and capacity to endure. Besides the scattered groups of Eskimos in the north, who live by hunting seal and walrus, and the Indians who roam the interior in search of furs, there are some seven or eight thousand English-speaking inhabitants widely scattered along the coast. In summer as many as thirty thousand fishermen are drawn from Newfoundland and Nova Scotia to share in the profit of the cod-and salmon-fisheries. All of these people were practically without medical care before Dr. Grenfell came. Can you imagine what this meant? This is the story of one fisherman in his own words:
“I had a poisoned finger. It rose up and got very bad. I did not know what to do, so I took a passage on a schooner and went to Halifax. It was nine months before I was able to get back, as there was no boat going back before the winter. It cost me seventy-five dollars, and my hand was the same as useless, as it was so long before it was treated.”
Another told of having to wait nine days after “shooting his hand” before he could reach a doctor; and he had made the necessary journey in remarkably good time at that. He did not know if he ought to thank the doctor for saving his life when it was too late to save his hand. What can a poor fisherman do without a hand?
The chief sources of danger to these people who live by the food of the sea are the uncertain
winds and the treacherous ice-floes. When the ice begins to break in spring, the swift currents move great masses along with terrific force. Then woe betide the rash schooner that ventures into the path of these ice-rafts! For a moment she pushes her way among the floating “pans” or cakes of ice. All at once the terrible jam comes. The schooner is caught like a rat in a trap. The jaws of the ice monster never relax, while the timbers of the vessel crack and splinter and the solid deck-beams arch up, bow fashion, and snap like so many straws. Then, perhaps, the pressure changes. With a sudden shift of the wind a rift comes between the huge ice-masses, and the sea swallows its prey.
It is a strange thing that but few of the fishermen know how to swim. “You see, we has enough o’ the water without goin’ to bother wi’ it when we are ashore,” one old skipper told the doctor in explanation.
The only means of rescue when one finds himself in the water is a line or a pole held by friends until a boat can be brought to the scene. Many stories might be told of the bravery of these people and their instant willingness to serve each other. Once a girl, who saw her brother fall through a hole in the ice, ran swiftly to the spot, while the men who were trying to reach the place with their boat shouted to her to go back. Stretching full length, however, on the gradually sinking ice, she held on to her brother till the boat forced its way to them.
Perhaps the most terrible experience that has come to the brave doctor was caused by the ice-floes. It was on Easter Sunday in 1908 when word came to the hospital that a boy was very ill in a little village sixty miles away. The doctor at once got his “komatik,” or dog-sledge, in readiness and his splendid team of eight dogs, who had often carried him through many tight places. Brin, the leader, was the one who could be trusted to keep the trail when all signs and landmarks were covered by snow and ice. There were also Doc, Spy, Jack, Sue, Jerry, Watch, and Moody—each no less beloved for his own strong points and faithful service.
It was while crossing an arm of the sea, a ten-mile run on salt-water ice, that the accident occurred. An unusually heavy sea had left great openings between enormous blocks or “pans” of ice a little to seaward. It seemed, however, that the doctor could be sure of a safe passage on an ice-bridge, that though rough, was firmly packed, while the stiff sea-breeze was making it stronger moment by moment through driving the floating pans toward the shore. But all at once there came a sudden change in the wind. It began to blow from the land, and in a moment the doctor realized that his ice-bridge had broken asunder and the portion on which he found himself was separated by a widening chasm from the rest. He was adrift on an ice-pan.
It all happened so quickly that he was unable to do anything but cut the harness of the dogs to keep them from being tangled in the traces and dragged down after the sled. He found himself soaking wet, his sledge, with his extra clothing, gone, and only the remotest chance of being seen from the lonely shore and rescued. If only water had separated him from the bank, he might have tried swimming, but, for the most part, between the floating pans was “slob ice,” that is, ice broken into tiny bits by the grinding together of the huge masses.
Night came, and with it such intense cold that he was obliged to sacrifice three of his dogs and clothe himself in their skins to keep from freezing, for coat, hat, and gloves had been lost in the first struggle to gain a place on the largest available “pan” of ice. Then, curled up among the remaining dogs, and so, somewhat protected from the bitter wind, he fell asleep.
When daylight came, he took off his gaily-colored shirt, which was a relic of his football days, and, with the leg bones of the slain dogs as a pole, constructed a flag of distress. The warmth of the sun brought cheer; and so, even though his reason told him that there was but the smallest chance of being seen, he stood up and waved his flag steadily until too weary to make another move. Every time he sat down for a moment of rest, “Doc” came and licked his face and then went to the edge of the ice, as if to suggest it was high time to start.
At last Dr. Grenfell thought he saw the gleam of an oar. He could hardly believe his eyes, which were, indeed, almost snow-blinded, as his dark glasses had been lost with all his other things. Then—yes—surely there was the keel of a boat, and a man waving to him! In a moment came the blessed sound of a friendly voice.
Now that the struggle was over, he felt himself lifted into the boat as in a dream. In the same way he swallowed the hot tea which they had brought in a bottle. This is what one of the rescuers said, in telling about it afterward:
“When we got near un, it didn’t seem like ’t was the doctor. ’E looked so old an’ ’is face such a queer color. ’E was very solemn-like when us took un an’ the dogs in th’ boat. Th’ first thing ’e said was how wonderfu’ sorry ’e was o’ gettin’ into such a mess an’ givin’ we th’ trouble o’ comin’ out for un. Then ’e fretted about the b’y ’e was goin’ to see, it bein’ too late to reach un, and us to’ un ’is life was worth more ’n the b’y, fur ’e could save others. But ’e still fretted.”
They had an exciting time of it, reaching the shore. Sometimes they had to jump out and force the ice-pans apart; again, when the wind packed the blocks together too close, they had to drag the boat over.
When the bank was gained at last and the doctor dressed in the warm clothes that the fishermen wear, they got a sledge ready to take him to the hospital, where his frozen hands and feet could be treated. There, too, the next day the sick boy was brought, and his life saved.
Afterward, in telling of his experience, the thing which moved the doctor most was the sacrifice of his dogs. In his hallway a bronze tablet was placed with this inscription:
TO THE MEMORY OF
THREE NOBLE DOGS
MOODY
WATCH
SPY
WHOSE LIVES WERE GIVEN
FOR MINE ON THE ICE
APRIL 21ST, 1908
WILFRED GRENFELL
In his old home in England his brother put up a similar tablet, adding these words, “Not one of them is forgotten before your Father which is in heaven.”
Besides caring for the people himself, Dr. Grenfell won the interest of other workers—doctors, nurses, and teachers. Through his efforts, hospitals, schools, and orphan-asylums have been built. Of all the problems, however, with which this large-hearted, practical friend of the deep-sea fishermen has had to deal in his Labrador work, perhaps the chief was that of the dire poverty of the people. It seemed idle to try to cure men of ills which were the direct result of conditions under which they lived.
When the doctor began his work in 1892 he found that the poverty-stricken people were practically at the mercy of unprincipled, scheming storekeepers who charged two or three prices for flour, salt, and other necessaries of life. The men, as a result, were always in debt, mortgaging their next summer’s catch of fish long before the winter was over. To cure this evil, Grenfell opened coöperative stores, run solely for the benefit of the fishermen, and established industries that would give a chance of employment during the cold months. A grant of timberland was obtained from the government and a lumber-mill opened. A schooner-building yard, and a cooperage for making kegs and barrels to hold the fish exported, were next installed.
This made it possible to gather together the people, who were formerly widely scattered because dependent on food gained through hunting and trapping. This made it possible, too, to carry out plans for general improvement—schools for the children and some social life. Two small jails, no longer needed in this capacity, were converted into clubs, with libraries and games. Realizing the general need for healthful recreation, the doctor introduced rubber footballs, which might be used in the snow. The supply of imported articles could not keep pace with the demand, however. All along the coast, young and old joined in the game. Even the Eskimo women, with wee babies in their hoods, played with their brown-faced boys and girls, using sealskin balls stuffed with dry grass.
Knowing that Labrador can never hope to do much in agriculture, as even the cabbages and potatoes frequently suffer through summer frosts, the doctor tried to add to the resources of the country by introducing a herd of reindeer from Lapland, together with three families of Lapps to teach the people how to care for them. Reindeer milk is rich and makes good cheese. Moreover, the supply of meat and leather they provide is helping to make up for the falling-off in the number of seals, due to unrestricted hunting. The transportation afforded by the reindeer is also important in a land where rapid transit consists of dog-sledges.
Dr. Grenfell has himself financed his various schemes, using, in addition to gifts from those whom he can interest, the entire income gained from his books and lectures. He keeps nothing for himself but the small salary as mission doctor to pay actual living expenses. All of the industrial enterprises—coöperative stores, sawmills, reindeer, fox-farms, are deeded to the Deep-Sea Mission, and become its property as soon as they begin to be profitable.
Would you like to spend a day with Dr. Grenfell in summer, when he cruises about in his hospital-ship three or four thousand miles back and forth, from St. John’s all along the Labrador coast? You would see what a wonderful pilot the doctor is as he faces the perils of hidden reefs, icebergs, fogs, and storms. You would see that he can doctor his ship, should it leak or the propeller go lame, as well as the numbers of people who come to him with every sort of ill from aching teeth to broken bones.
Perhaps, though, you might prefer a fine, crisp day in winter. Then you could drive forty or fifty miles in the komatik, getting off to run when you feel a bit stiff with the cold, especially if it happens to be uphill. You might be tempted to coast down the hills, but you find that dogs can’t stand that any more than horses could, so you let down the “drug” (a piece of iron chain) to block the runners. There is no sound except the lone twitter of a venturesome tomtit who decided to risk the winter in a particularly thick spruce-tree. Sometimes you go bumpity-bump over fallen trees, with pitfalls between lightly covered with snow. Sometimes the dogs bound ahead eagerly over smooth ground where the only signs of the times are the occasional tracks of a rabbit, partridge, fox, or caribou. Then how you will enjoy the dinner of hot toasted pork cakes before the open fire, after the excitement of feeding the ravenous dogs with huge pieces of frozen seal-meat and seeing them burrow down under the snow for their night’s sleep. If there is no pressing need of his services next morning, the doctor may take you skeeing, or show you how to catch trout through a hole in the ice.
Winter or summer, perhaps you might come to agree with Dr. Grenfell that one may have “a jolly good time” while doing a man’s work in rough, out-of-the-way Labrador. You would, at any rate, have a chance to discover that life may be a splendid adventure.
WE know of many heroes—heroes of long ago, whose shining deeds make the past bright; and heroes of to-day, whose courage in the face of danger and hardship and whose faithful service for others make the times in which we live truly the best times of all. But should you ask me who of all this mighty company of the brave was the bravest, I should answer, Captain Scott. Some one has called his story, “The Undying Story of Captain Scott.” Would you like to hear it, and know for yourself why it is that as long as true men live this is a story that cannot die?
Most people who work know what they are working for; most men who are fighting for a cause know where they give their strength and their lives. The explorer alone has to go forward in the dark. He does not know what he will find. Only he hears within his heart the still whisper: “Something hidden. Go and find it.” And he believes that there is no far place of the earth that does not hold some truth, something that will help us learn the secrets of life and explain much that puzzles us in the world to-day.
When the explorer has once begun to think and wonder about the great unseen, unknown countries, where man has never journeyed, the whisper comes again and again: “Something hidden. Go and find it.”
People sometimes say to the explorer, “There is no sense of going to those strange lands where you cannot live. No good nor gold ever yet came from No-Man’s Land.”
But the men who went into the jungles of darkest Africa said, “As long as there is something hidden we must go to find it.” And the men who went into the still, white, frozen lands of the North said: “There is no truth that can stay untouched. When we know the secrets of the North and the South, we shall the better understand the East and the West.”
The whisper, “Something hidden,” came to Robert Falcon Scott when he was a little boy in Devonshire, England. Con, as he was called, never tired of hearing the tales of Sir Walter Raleigh, and of Sir Francis Drake, who sailed the seas and found a new world for England and sent his drum back to Devon where it was hung on the old sea-wall to show that the great days of the past would surely live again.
The Devonshire men were sure that the brave spirit of Drake would come back in some true English heart whenever the time of need came. They even whispered when they told how Nelson won his great victory at Trafalgar,
“It was the spirit of Sir Francis Drake.”
When Con heard these tales, and the stories of his own father and uncles who were captains in England’s navy, he knew it was true that the spirit of a brave man does not die.
Sometimes when he was thinking of these things and wondering about the “something hidden” that the future had in store for him, his father would have to call him three or four times before he could wake him from his dream. “Old Mooney,” his father called him then, and he shook his head.
“Remember, son,” he would say, “an hour of doing is better than a life of dreaming. You must wake up and stir about in this world, and prove that you have it in you to be a man.”
How do you think that the delicate boy, with the narrow chest and the dreamy blue eyes, whom his father called “Old Mooney,” grew into the wide-awake, practical lad who became, a few years later, captain of the naval cadets on the training ship Britannia?
“I must learn to command this idle, dreamy ‘Old Mooney’ before I can ever command a ship,” he said to himself. So he gave himself orders in earnest.
When he wanted to lie in bed an extra half hour, it was, “Up, sir! ‘Up and doing,’ is the word!” And out he would jump with a laugh and a cheer for the new day.
When he felt like hugging the fire with a book on his knees he would say, “Out, sir! Get out in the open air and show what you’re made of!” Then he would race for an hour or two with his dog, a big Dane, over the downs, to come back in a glow ready for anything. And so the man who was to command others became master of himself. There came a time when a strong, brave man was needed to take command of the ship Discovery, that was to sail over unexplored seas to the South Pole. And Robert Falcon Scott, then a lieutenant in the royal navy, who had long dreamed of going forth where ships and men had never been and find the “something hidden” in strange far-off lands, found his dream had come true. He was put in command of that ship.
Three years were spent in that terrible land where
in the fierce winds that swept over those great death-white wastes.
After this time of hardship and plucky endurance it was hard to have to return without having reached the South Pole. But he came back with so much of deepest interest and value to report about the unknown country, that those who had given their money to provide for the expedition said: “The voyage has really been a success. Captain Scott must go again under better conditions with the best help and equipment possible.”
It was some time, however, before Captain Scott could be spared to go on that second and last voyage to the South Pole. This man who knew all about commanding ships and men was needed to help with the great battleships of the navy. Five years had passed before plans were ready for the greatest voyage of all.
When it was known that Captain Scott was to set out on another expedition, eight thousand men volunteered to go as members of the party. It was splendid to think how much real interest there was in the work and to know how much true bravery and fine spirit of adventure there is in the men of our every-day world, but it was hard to choose wisely out of so many the sixty men to make up the party.
They needed, of course, officers of the navy, besides Captain Scott, to help plan and direct, a crew of able seamen, firemen, and stokers to
run the ship, and doctors and stewards to take care of the men. Besides these, they wanted men of science who would be able to investigate in the right way the plants, animals, rocks, ice, ocean currents, and winds of that strange part of the earth; and an artist able to draw and to take the best kind of photographs and moving pictures.
The ship chosen for this voyage was the Terra Nova, the largest and strongest whaler that could be found. Whalers are ships used in whale-fishing, which are built expressly to make their way through the floating ice of Arctic seas.
The Terra Nova was a stout steamer carrying full sail, so that the winds might help in sending her on her way, thus saving coal whenever possible. The great difficulty was, of course, the carrying of sufficient supplies for a long time and for many needs.
With great care each smallest detail was worked out. There were three motor sledges, nineteen ponies, and thirty-three dogs to transport supplies. There was material for putting up huts and tents. There were sacks of coal, great cans of oil and petrol (gasoline); and tons of boxes of provisions, such as pemmican, biscuit, butter, sugar, chocolate—things that would not spoil and which would best keep men strong and warm while working hard in a cold country. There were fur coats, fur sleeping bags, snow shoes, tools of all sorts, precious instruments, books, and many other things, each of which was carefully considered for they were going where no further supplies of any sort were to be had.
On June 15, 1910, the Terra Nova sailed from Wales, and on November 26 left New Zealand for the great adventure.
If the men had been superstitious they would have been sure that a troublous time was ahead, for almost immediately a terrible storm broke. Great waves swept over the decks, the men had to work with buckets and pumps to bale out the engine room, while boxes and cases went bumping about on the tossing ship, endangering the lives of men and animals, and adding to the noise and terror of the blinding, roaring tempest.
But through it all the men never lost their spirits. Scott led in the singing of chanties, as they worked hour after hour to save the ship and its precious cargo.
At last they came out on a calm sea where the sun shone on blue waves dotted here and there with giant ice-bergs, like great floating palaces, agleam with magic light and color, beautiful outposts of the icy world they were about to enter.
You know that the seasons in the South Arctic regions are exactly opposite to ours. Christmas comes in the middle of their summer—the time of the long day when the sun never drops below the horizon. Their winter, when they get no sunlight for months, comes during the time we are having spring and summer.
It was Scott’s plan to sail as far as the ship could go during the time of light, build a comfortable hut for winter quarters, then go ahead with sledges and carry loads of provisions, leaving them in depots along the path of their journey south, which was to begin with the coming of the next long day.
Patient watchfulness, not only by the man in the crow’s nest, but on the part of all hands, was needed to guide the ship through the great masses of ice that pressed closer and closer about, as if they longed to seize and keep it forever in their freezing hold.
At last in January they came within sight of Mt. Terror, a volcano on Ross Island, which marked the place where they must land. It was strange and terrible, but most beautiful, to see the fire rise from that snowy mountain in the great white world they had come to explore. The ship could go no farther south because there stretched away from the shore of the island the great Ice Barrier, an enormous ice cap rising above the sea fifty or sixty feet and extending for 150,000 square miles.
Scott came, you remember, knowing well what lay before him. To reach the South Pole he must travel from his winter camp on Ross Island, 424 miles over the barrier, climb 125 miles over a monster glacier, and then push his way over 353 more miles of rough ice on a lofty, wind-swept plain. The whole journey southward and back to the winter hut covered about 1,850 miles.
As they could not count at most on more than 150 days in the year when marching would be possible, this meant that they must make over ten miles a day during the time of daylight. Scott knew how hard this must be in that land of fierce winds and sudden blizzards, when the blinding, drifting snow made all marching out of the question. But there was nothing of the dreamer about him now; he carefully worked out his plans and prepared for every emergency.
After finding a good place to land and build the hut for the winter camp where it would be sheltered from the worst winds, they spent eight days unloading the ship, which then sailed away along the edge of the barrier with a part of the men, to find out how things were to the east of them.
Captain Scott and his men had an exciting time, I can tell you, carrying their heavy boxes and packing cases across the ice to the beach. Great killer whales, twenty feet long, came booming along under them, striking the ice with their backs, making it rock dizzily and split into wide cracks, over which the men had to jump to save their lives and their precious stores.
While part of the company was building the hut and making it comfortable for the long dark winter, Captain Scott and a group of picked men began the work of going ahead and planting stores at depots along the way south. They would place fuel and boxes of food under canvas cover, well planted to secure it against the wind, and mark the spot by a high cairn, or mound, made of blocks of ice. This mound was topped with upright skis or dark packing boxes, which could be seen as black specks miles away in that white world. At intervals along the trail they would erect other cairns to mark the way over the desert of snow. Then back they went to the hut and the winter of waiting before the march.
How do you suppose they spent the long weeks of darkness? Why, they had a wonderful time! Each man was studying with all his might about the many strange things he had found in that land.
Wilson, who was Scott’s best friend, gave illustrated lectures about the water birds he had found near there, the clumsy penguins who came tottering up right in the face of his camera as if they were anxious to have their pictures taken. He had pictures, too, of their nests and their funny, floundering babies. There were also pictures of seals peeping up at him out of their breathing-holes in the ice, where he had gone fishing and had caught all sorts of curious sea creatures.
Other men were examining pieces of rock and telling the story which they told of the history of the earth ages and ages ago when the land of that Polar world was joined with the continents of Africa and South America. Evans gave lectures on surveying, and Scott told about the experiences of his earlier voyage and explained the use of his delicate instruments.
Of course they took short exploring trips about, and sometimes when the moon was up, or, perhaps, in the scant twilight of midday, they played a game of football in the snow.
At last the sun returned, and the time came for the great journey about the first of November, just a year after they had left New Zealand.
They had not gone far when it was proved that the motor sledges were useless, as the engines were not fitted for working in such intense cold. So, sorrowfully they had to leave them behind, and make ponies and dogs do all the work of hauling.
Then began a time of storms when blizzard followed blizzard. It seemed that they had met the wild spirit of all tempests in his snowy fastness, and as if he were striving to prove that the will of the strongest man must give way before the savage force of wind and weather. But there was something in the soul of these men that could not be conquered by any hardship—something that would never give up.
“The soul of a true man is stronger than anything that can happen to him,” said Captain Scott.
It seemed as if this journey was made to prove that. And it did prove it.
Misfortune followed misfortune. The sturdy ponies could not stand the dangers. Some of them slipped and fell into deep chasms in the ice; others suffered so that the only kind thing was to put them out of their pain. The men went along then up the fearful climb across the glacier, with just the help of the dogs who pulled the sledges carrying provisions. One of the men became very ill, which delayed them further. And ever the dreadful wind raged about them.
They reached a point about 170 miles from the Pole on New Year’s day. Here Scott decided to send two members of his party back with the sick man and the dog sledge. They were, of course, disappointed, but realized it was for the best.
After leaving part of their provisions in a new depot to feed them on the way back, Captain Scott and four men, Wilson, Oates, Bowers, and Evans, went on the last march to the Pole with lighter loads which they dragged on a hand sledge. This is what Scott wrote in the letter sent back by his men:
“A last note from a hopeful position. I think it’s going to be all right. We have a fine party going forward and all arrangements are going well.”
How did the way seem to the men who still went on and on, now in the awful glare of the sun on the glistening ice, now in the teeth of a terrific gale? Here are some lines written by Wilson which may tell you something of what they felt: