The city was in flames.  Much of it was already in ashes.  Stark, blackened chimneys rose where buildings had once stood.  Flames were still shooting upward from those as yet but partly consumed.  Some of the vessels anchored in the harbor were ablaze.  Everything had been destroyed or was still burning.  The Colonial public buildings, the fine churches, the great warehouses that had lined the wharves, even the wharves themselves, were smouldering ruins, and scarcely a private house remained.  It was a scene of complete and terrible desolation.  The fire had even extended to the forests beyond the city, and for weeks afterward continued to rage and carry destruction to quiet, scattered homes of the country.

[Illustration:  “THE LABRADOR ‘LIVEYERE’”]

The cause or origin of the fire no one knew.  It had come as a devastating scourge.  It had left the beautiful little city a mass of blackened, smoking ruins.

The Newfoundlanders are as fine and brave a people as ever lived.  Deep trouble had come to them, but they met it with their characteristic heroism.  No one was whining, or wringing his hands, or crying out against God.  They were accepting it all as cheerfully as any people can ever accept so sweeping a calamity.  Benjamin Franklin said, “God helps them that help themselves.”  That is as true of a city as it is of a person.  That is what the St. Johns people were doing, and already, while the fire still burned, they were making plans to take care of themselves and rebuild their city.

Of course Doctor Grenfell could do little to help with his one small ship, but he did what he could.  The officials and the people found time to welcome him and to tell him how glad they were that he was to go to Labrador to heal the sick of their fleets and make the lives of the fishermen and the natives of the northern coast happier and pleasanter.

A pilot was necessary to guide the Albert along the uncharted coast of Labrador.  Captain Nicholas Fitzgerald was provided by the Newfoundland government to serve in this capacity.  Doctor Grenfell invited Mr. Adolph Neilson, Superintendent of Fisheries for Newfoundland, to accompany them, and he accepted the invitation, that he might lend his aid to getting the work of the mission started.  He proved a valuable addition to the party.  Then the Albert sailed away to cruise her new field of service.

It will be interesting to turn to a map and see for ourselves the country to which Doctor Grenfell was going.  We will find Labrador in the northeastern corner of the North American continent, just as Alaska is in the northwestern corner.

Like Alaska, Labrador is a great peninsula and is nearly, though not quite, so large as Alaska.  Some maps will show only a narrow strip along the Atlantic east of the peninsula marked “Labrador.”  This is incorrect.  The whole peninsula, bounded on the south by the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Straits of Belle Isle, the east by the Atlantic Ocean, the north by Hudson Straits, the west by Hudson Bay and James Bay and the Province of Quebec, is included in Labrador.  The narrow strip on the east is under the jurisdiction of Newfoundland, while the remainder is owned by Quebec.  Newfoundland is the oldest colony of Great Britain.  It is not a part of Canada, but has a separate government.