‘By-and-by the schooner Fox made her appearance, and I embarked once more, to endeavour to get to the last inhabited spot, Little Whale River. We went half way, and then the ice sent a hole through the Fox’s side; this we covered with a sheet of lead. I now again deserted the Fox, and took to the canoe, in which, in somewhat less than two days, I got at last to my journey’s end. And that journey’s end is a dreary, dreary place, with scarcely any summer. It was August, and the ice was lying thick at the mouth of the river. But my work was not dreary. I here met Eskimo, the most teachable of people. They were very ready for school or service, and although their attainments were not high, so much was I impressed with their sincerity and perseverance, that I admitted four families into the Christian Church. This rewarded me for all my toil. I can address them now as brothers and sisters; and I am sure that all my friends will rejoice with me for the blessing with which God crowned my labour.
‘I had my difficulties in getting back again; ice still disputed our progress, but on August 30, late in the evening, the trusty Fox, battered and bruised, came to anchor at Moose Factory, and I had the happiness of once more meeting my family, and of finding that all had been quite well during the whole of my absence.’
About this time Mr. Horden began to plead for help to train up one of the most promising of his school-boys as a catechist. Friends of the Coral Fund took up the lad, and the money expended upon his education was not in vain, for that boy is now a native pastor in charge of Rupert’s House. Of him and of his ordination we shall have more to relate by-and-by. The school children in whom Mr. Horden had first taken an interest were growing up. Some were already earning their living, some were married; one girl had gone with her husband to the Red River settlement, and was, wrote Mr. Horden, in 1869, in as respectable a sphere of life as any Christian farmer’s wife in England could be. Another had married a fine young Moose Fort hunter, an excellent voyager. After an absence of several months, they with their little child came back to the place, stayed a few days, and again departed. In May, at the breaking-up of the river, the Indians came in. One canoe Mr. Horden felt sure was that of Amelia and her husband, and he at once went to see them.
‘I saw,’ he says, ‘first a fair little boy, plump and hearty, showing that great care had been taken of him. I then cast my eye on a woman sitting near, whom I took to be a stranger; but another look showed me that the poor emaciated creature was indeed none other than Amelia, who had been brought to the brink of the grave by starvation. She had lost her husband, but in all her privations she had taken care that her baby son should not want. The tale of her suffering was very distressing. After leaving Moose in the end of March, they by themselves had gone to their hunting-grounds, hoping to get a few furs to pay off the debt they had contracted with the fur-trader; for in the early part of the winter they had been very unfortunate, a wolverine having destroyed nearly all the martens they had trapped. Amelia’s husband was soon attacked by sickness, which entirely laid him by; food was very scarce, and the little the forest might yield he could not seek. He gradually became worse and worse, his sufferings aggravated by want, his only source of consolation was his religion; both expected to lay their bones, as well as those of the child, where they were. He wrote a letter, and got Amelia to go and hang it up where some Indians might pass in the summer, stating their joint deaths and the cause, and requesting burial. The end came, the once strong young man lay a corpse; but Amelia had something to live for—for her little son she would struggle on. Unable to dig a grave, for she had no strength and the ground was frozen as hard as a stone, she covered the body with moss, and set off to the Main Moose River, hoping there to fall in with Indians. She was not disappointed. After a while she fell in with Isaac Mekawatch, a Moose Indian, who took care of her and her child, and brought them in safety to the fort. Such incidents as this are amongst the sad experiences of life in Moosonee.’
In 1870 Mr. Horden wrote: ‘I have this summer travelled about thirteen hundred miles, and during a part of this time I experienced a considerable degree of hardship, which brought me down greatly. I am now, however, well as ever I have been in my life. It was a very long journey, and occupied many weeks, yet I did not travel out of my parish all the time. When I was at Matawakumma, five hundred miles south of Moose, I was upwards of eleven hundred miles from Little Whale River.
‘I left Moose on June 13, and overtook a boat going to the Long Portage, with goods for the supply of New Brunswick, and I went forward in it. Travelling by boat is very monotonous work indeed. At breakfast-time, dinner-time, and when the day’s work was done, we endeavoured to catch a few fish, our rod a long rough stick cut from the woods, a piece of strong cord for a line, to which we attached a large hook baited with salt pork; with this we would occasionally draw out a perch, a trout, a pike from six to twelve pounds in weight. At the Long Portage I changed my mode of travelling, my companions now using the canoe. With my new friends I got on extremely well, taking advantage of every opportunity to instruct them in divine things. Most of them received the instruction gladly, but a few held back; they love their old superstitions, their conjurations, dreams, spirits, and all the other things which so sadly debase the Indian mind. In due time New Brunswick was reached, and I at once began my work.
‘The Indians here, before they had ever seen a missionary, used to meet for prayer and exhortation, having learnt a little from an Indian who had seen one. Desirous of knowing how they conducted their service, about which I had heard a great deal, I arranged one evening to be present as a spectator. They showed no shyness, but consented at once.
‘At the time appointed, all being assembled, one gave out the verse of a hymn, which was sung by all; another then repeated a text of Scripture, then a second verse of the hymn was sung, followed by a second text; all then knelt down, I by the side of the old chief, and about six began to pray aloud at the same time, each in his own words. Ojibway’s prayer was very simple, of course, but it was a cry to Jesus for mercy; and can we doubt that his prayer was heard? Kneeling by his side was one sent by God to show him the way of salvation.