Identifier: labradorcountryp02gren (find matches)
Title: Labrador, the country and the people
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Grenfell, Wilfred Thomason, Sir, 1865-1940
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York, The Macmillan co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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rvation or the isolation thatarises from no line of communication in the winter. Thoseresidents, who make this journey, invariably tell me theywould greatly prefer to remain on the coast in winter ifit were possible. The lack of increase is partly due, also, to the want ofcare of the young. I have no statistics to show the rela-tive mortality in childhood. I know it to be great. Thefamilies are comparatively large. I call to mind one ofthirteen, one of fourteen, and several of seven and eight.Most men marry young. Bachelors are very few on thecoast. A knowledge of the cheaper food-stuffs and howto use them would be a great help. Thus, corn meal,oatmeal, and rice are seldom used. ■ The average ageattained is certainly low. The older English and Scotchsettlers Hve and maintain their vitality much longer thanthose of the succeeding generations. They also hold theirown much better in the battle with their environment.One man proudly told me, ^Father is eighty-two and hasnta kink in him.
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Eskimo Hunter THE PEOPLE OF THE COAST 179 The sicknesses of the coast are not indigenous. In thepast seventeen years there have been grippe; a few casesof small-pox, imported by a schooner from the Gulf;scarlet fever brought from Newfoundland in a steamer;one small outbreak of diphtheria in the Straits on thearrival of the summer visitors; and in summer a fewsporadic cases of typhoid. The Eskimo brought back from the Chicago Expositiontyphoid of a very virulent type, which killed several hun-dred of them; and, from the Buffalo Exposition, diphtheria,which is still raging amongst them, and has destroyedmany. An epidemic of grippe, compHcated with pneu-monia and pericarditis, killed about sixty in the neighbour-hood of Okkak. The worst enemy of the Eskimo is, again,tuberculosis, and from that in one form or another mostof the people die. The disease is entirely due to ignorance,neglect, and poverty. Of late, an active crusade againstit has been commenced. On the other hand, so healthful

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