Day after day Thy mercy was renewed,
Night after night my safety been secured.
...
More like to Jesus I would daily grow,
Through whom redemption, love, and mercy flow;
More loving, holy, generous, resigned,
Thoughtless of self, the friend of all mankind.
Thus was the newly consecrated bishop moved to sing.
At home in Moose again, with his dear wife and children, Bishop Horden hastened to buckle to his beloved work; but he found time to write a graphic account of his homeward journey, in which he had as his companion his second daughter, who had just left school; the eldest was already at Moose. They travelled viâ New York to Michipicoton, and thence the remainder of the long, long journey by canoe, ‘encamping,’ wrote the bishop, ‘in woods under a canvas marquee, waited on by Indians, travelling through perfect solitudes for days without seeing any human being other than our crew. It was on the morning of Tuesday, July 8, that we stepped into our canoe, having four Indian companions. We went up the river slowly against the stream. Then came a long portage, where we carried everything, and this detained us many hours; then on and on till night. Then we put ashore, lit our fire, erected our tent, fried our pancakes, boiled our kettles, made our beds, and having partaken of a good supper, we assembled our men around us, and they knelt in prayer to the Father in heaven; then, shutting the tent’s frail door, we lay down to rest.
‘The feeling was strange: so many months had elapsed since the ground had been my bed. Sleep did not come at once, and thoughts were busy on the past and the future. Presently I slept soundly until the early morn, when we were awakened to pursue our way. We were off by five o’clock, and during the day travelled mostly among large lakes. There were no birds, no creatures of any kind visible, except when we were crossing the portages, and here we saw quite enough of the dreaded mosquito. On the third day we came upon two men engaged in erecting a house, which was to be a trading post in opposition to the great traders of the country, the Hudson’s Bay Company. On our fifth night, when we were not very far from New Brunswick, we were so troubled by mosquitoes that we could get no sleep, and we were not at all sorry when the light of the early morn allowed us to pursue our way over a bare and swampy portage.