THE TASK BEGUN.
In 1865 Mr. Nisbet was recommended to the synod for a mission among this uncivilized but interesting people. The gravity of the enterprise is to be borne in mind. Hudson's Bay Company traders had for many years ventured among the tribes of the plains. The Hudson's Bay Company trader, however, had the Union Jack flying over him; he was housed in a strong fort; in his hands were weapons, and the power of the company was felt over the whole land; but the missionary came with a message of peace; he had no emblem of force about him, he preached the doctrine, "If one cheek was smitten to turn the other also," and so to proceed 500 miles from Red River and break ground on the Saskatchewan, to be largely dependent on the locality for sustenance, and to trust to the good-will of the Indians, required courage and resource. And these qualities James Nisbet had. He was not a man of display, was a man of quiet, undemonstrative manner, but had no cowardice or surrender in him. Like his countryman, the Highland piper, who was asked to play the "retreat," he could reply that he had never learned that tune. Mr. Nisbet's theology was of a very exact kind. He was in the habit of advising complete reliance in God, perhaps there was a strain of the severe, even of the stoical, in it; but in the case of our pioneer Indian missionary, he lived out and exemplified it as well as preached it.