HARD WORK.
But the organization and development of the work in the new settlements was a mighty task. In Mr. Black's letters are frequently found: "Received your letter as I was leaving to visit Grassmere"; "Have just returned from the new settlement in Springfield"; "Paid a visit on church work to the Portage," and the like. This was to an equal or larger extent the same with every ordained missionary, professor and other laborer. The great question became, Who could do the most, not, Who could escape the most. The work was carried on during the winter as thoroughly as in summer.
In 1874 one of the ministers undertook to supply a new settlement, forty miles from Winnipeg, once a month during winter. Preaching at the distant point on Sabbath morning he came towards the city, about half way took another service among people who had come in that very year, and then struck homeward across the treeless, pathless, uninhabited prairie, having nothing to guide him but the stars.
The roads over the prairie in early days were nothing but trails running in a most perplexing manner, and missionaries were constantly losing their way, and sometimes spent the night in the shelter of a bluff, or solitary stack in the wide hay meadow. In some years the roads were very bad. To become "mired" or "bogged" in a "slough," and to have the shaganappi or Indian pony coolly lie down in the mud, was an occurrence by no means uncommon. Winter with its biting blasts gave no respite to the faithful missionary.
The history of Manitoba missions has been a marvellous record of faithful, uncomplaining, self-denying service. Men have been placed in charge of six or seven townships with settlers scattered sparsely through them. They have carried on for years, in winter's cold and summer's heat, service at six and seven points, three and even four on a Sabbath, and all this on small and poorly paid stipends. Truly Christ said, "My kingdom is not of this world."