By September the bishop was back again, busy amongst his Indians and with the European sailors who had spent perforce a whole year in the vicinity, the ship of 1873 having been ice-bound off Charlton Island; there was no place nearer at hand at which she could winter in safety. But the captain, mate, and some of the men had visited Moose during the summer, and every opportunity of communication had been taken advantage of. Now they were occupied in cleaning the ship and making ready for a fresh start homewards. Late one night, just before she set sail, the bishop and his wife accompanied their newly-married daughter on board, their eldest—the child whom Bishop Anderson had baptized. All hands were invited aft; a last solemn and affecting farewell service was held.
The annual ship came and went, and the good folks at Moose began to feel at once that winter was at the door. The weather, though still warm, could not be long depended upon. ‘We begin,’ wrote the bishop, ‘to take up our potatoes; that done, we look well to our buildings, to prevent as far as possible the entrance of frost; then we endeavour to lay in a stock of fish for the winter, some of which are salted while others are frozen—in which state they keep good almost all the winter; after that, pigs and cattle are killed, and cut up, and allowed to freeze. Then the great labour of the season begins—the cutting and hauling of firewood, for we have no coals here. We send men armed with large axes into the thick woods, and there they chop down tree after tree, strip off the branches, cut them into billets about three feet long, split them and pile them into a “cord.” A cord is a pile of billets eight feet long and four feet high, one and a half of such being considered a fair day’s work for a man. Then other men come with horses and oxen, harnessed to sledges, and haul the wood to our respective houses, near which it is replied. Then the men are sent further off to get logs for building purposes, which are rafted down the river on the breaking-up of the ice.
‘My young son Bertie delights in chopping, and in winter both Bertie and Beatrice delight in tobogganing, which gives them capital exercise. A piece of wood about six feet long, ten inches broad, and a quarter of an inch thick, is turned up a little in front, and is then called a sled; this is brought to the edge of the river’s bank, which is in some places very steep. Bertie sits down in front, armed with a short stick to guide the sled; his sister sits down behind him, and down they rush with amazing speed, the impetus carrying them far out on the frozen river; then they trudge up the bank, bringing the sled with them, and the process is repeated again and again. As this sort of exercise is a little too violent for a person of middle age, I don’t engage in it now. Then there is the fishing. Walking out two or three miles in snow-shoes, a gipsy tent is made in the woods; holes are cut in the thick ice, a pile of pine brush is brought from the woods; and then comes the sitting and shivering at the hole, bobbing a baited hook up and down, perhaps the pleasure of catching a fish, then the pleasure of cooking it, and then the pleasure of eating it.’
During the cold of this year’s winter the bishop allowed himself a rare holiday—the only one, indeed, with the exception of those connected with Christmas-tree doings, ever recorded by him in his many letters to us. Availing himself of an unusually fine warm day in February, he held a grand picnic with his family and friends, driving out four or five miles in dog and horse sleighs, taking dinner in a large comfortable tent, with a fine fire in the centre, and then going down to the river and fishing through holes cut in the ice. ‘Bobbing our hooks, baited with either a piece of fat pork or rabbit, until a hungry trout made a dart at it, we generally succeeded,’ he says, ‘in drawing it through the thick ice on to the snow, where in a short time he became frozen hard; for when I say that we had a warm day, I mean the thermometer stood but a little below zero.’ Yes, there sat the bishop and his children and friends on pine brush on the ice, quite enjoying themselves!
‘We got home very nicely in the evening, but the cold was then becoming severe, and as the wind was high we should have been very uncomfortable indeed had we been out much later. With all the drawbacks, I am very happy here at Moose. I have no time for kushkaletumowin, or “thinking long.” Were the day thirty hours instead of twenty-four, I should still find it too short. Each year finds me busier than its predecessor, and so I suppose it will continue to the end. The happiest man is he who is most diligently employed about his Master’s business. I have before me for next summer a most extensive journey; I go to Red River to attend the first meeting of our provincial synod, and then to York Factory, travelling over four thousand miles.’
The school, under the bishop’s own immediate superintendence, was going on well, the scholars making good progress. One boy, out of school hours, was employed in chopping wood for the school fire. Another had accompanied the bishop in all his last summer journeyings, behaving in an exemplary manner. A third, Edward Richards, was already very useful, assisting as a master in the school. The Indians are very fond of their children, and perhaps a little over-indulgent. The spoilt children are sometimes disobedient. The bishop gives an amusing description of parental admonition on one occasion at a distant camp. ‘I had been,’ he says, ‘away from home for some time, and hoped before night to arrive at East Main. I had reached a part of the coast opposite the large island Wepechenite, “the Walrus,” when I observed a body of Indians standing on a rock, watching us. Here was an opportunity not to be missed; those Indians might not hear the Gospel again for years. I at once directed my men to look out for a good landing-place, and I got ashore. My men also came ashore, and began collecting wood for the purpose of cooking breakfast. In the meantime the Indians, seeing our movements, got their canoes into the water; they did not come empty-handed, but brought a large number of fine white fish, called by them Atikamakwuk—“deer of the sea,” some dried, others fresh, just taken from the nets. I collected all our visitors to a service, at which many children were to be baptized. The deepest attention was paid. The morning hymn was heartily sung, for these Indians are all Christians. The discourse is being delivered when there is a great stir among the congregation; faces look excited, voices are raised, apparently in anger. For a moment I was at a loss to account for this; then I saw that it was my address that was taking effect, although not quite in the way I had intended. I was speaking to the young people, telling them their duty to their parents. The mothers thought this an opportunity not to be passed over, so, raising their voices, they cried out to their daughters, “Do you hear? Isn’t this what we are always telling you?” Then, rushing at them, they brought them to the front, saying, “Come here, that he may see you; let him see how ashamed you look, you disobedient children!” Turning to me they said, “Yes, they are disobedient, they will not listen; perhaps now they have heard you they will behave better.” The young people promised better conduct for the future. The service over, we once more took to our canoe, and paddled on under the hottest sun, I think, I have ever experienced.’
It was during this summer trip that the bishop witnessed an Indian dance.
‘I had travelled far,’ he says. ‘I had visited the stations on the East Main coast, and had been some time at Little Whale River. It is a dreary place, and the mighty, frowning, rocky portals of the river seem fitted for the entrance to other regions, to another world. I had spent much time preaching the Gospel to Europeans, half-castes, Indians, and Eskimo, and I was intending almost immediately to turn the bow of my canoe southwards, and speed back as fast as possible to my home at Moose Factory.
‘Walking out one evening with the gentleman in charge of the post, we were somewhat startled by a great noise proceeding from an encampment of Indians a quarter of a mile distant, on the top of a high hill. “A conjuring, a conjuring extraordinary!” said we. We ascended the hill quietly, and quite unobserved. Having attained the summit, we walked rapidly towards a large tent from which the noise was proceeding, and looked in, but at first could make out nothing distinctly. We entered, and found six or seven men standing as closely together as possible around a very small fire, dancing, or rather shuffling up and down, without in the least changing their position; the women and children were sitting around, admiring and applauding spectators of the doings of their lords and masters. There was music, too, both vocal and instrumental. The player was likewise the vocalist; he was an old man, who sat among the women and children; his instrument an old kettle, over which a piece of deer-skin had been tightly drawn, and this he beat with a stick, accompanying with his cracked voice, raised to its highest pitch. The dancing and music continued for some hours, but about every five minutes there was a momentary cessation, when all in the tent joined in a prolonged howl. All seemed to thoroughly enjoy the sport, and I was myself glad to see it, for it was no conjuring after all, only a little simple amusement, and it was the first sign of animation I had witnessed among those Indians, who are not of a very high type of humanity. They are now all Christians, but the standard of Christianity is low—how can it be otherwise? I am the nearest clergyman to them, and I am six hundred miles distant. The difficulty of reaching them is very great, for the sea in their vicinity is open but for a short time in the whole year. This summer I had hoped to see a labourer stationed among them and the teachable Eskimo, but for the present I have been disappointed.’