‘Of all I received last ship time nothing gladdened my eyes more than the sight of a box of Eskimo books in the syllabic character, printed from manuscript sent home the previous year. I can fancy with what delight Mr. Peck pounced on them, and with what gratification the Eskimo beheld the raising of the lid which exposed to view so much spiritual food. Our native library is becoming extensive, new books being added every year. There is no language without literature. It is blessed work supplying the aborigines of any country with the Word of Life; that Word which reveals to them Jesus, and raises them in spiritual things to a level with the most polished and civilised nations on earth.’
CHAPTER XIII
YORK FACTORY
Leaving the station in charge of the Rev. J. Keen, the bishop started, in June 1879, on the long contemplated visit to York Factory, in the northern part of his diocese. ‘I left Moose,’ he says, ‘on June 30, having made every necessary arrangement for the management of the mission during my absence. At Michipicoton, close to the mighty Lake Superior, kind friends were my hosts for four days, days full of work, and then a steamer carried me to Sault St. Marie, a long way out of my course, where I was obliged to remain a week, during which I was the guest of another missionary bishop, the Bishop of Algoma, whose diocese is rapidly filling up from England and the well-peopled parts of Canada.
‘I went through Lake Superior. Four-and-twenty hours of railroad followed, and fourteen hours more of steamer, and the second stage was completed. A month was spent with my kind friend the Bishop of Rupertsland. I was in the centre of the civilisation of the country, in the neighbourhood of Winnipeg, only a few years ago a waste, now a populous town, with splendid schools, churches, banks, colleges, town hall, &c. I was constantly at work, preaching in the various churches, sometimes in Cree, sometimes in English, added to which to my lot fell the duty of preaching the sermon at the opening of the synod, at which the clergy were collected from various parts of the country. I need not say how thoroughly this month was enjoyed; it gave me the largest amount of Christian intercourse I have had for several years.
‘When the steamer which was to convey me through Lake Winnipeg was ready to start I went on board, and in her had a journey of three hundred miles to Old Fort, from which I was conveyed to Norfolk House by boat. I was far enough away from civilisation now, and had before me five hundred miles of dreary and desolate country. There were some immense lakes to cross, and some rough rapids to descend; but we saw no bold falls, such as I have been accustomed to find in other parts of the country.
‘On September 19 I found myself at my journey’s end, at York Factory, a spot I had longed to visit for many, many years, a spot at which several devoted missionaries have laboured, where Christ has been faithfully preached, and where many precious souls have been gathered into His garner.’
The Rev. J. Winter had arrived at the station to take the place of Archdeacon Kirkby, who had quitted York by the annual ship just a week before. Mr. Winter had heard the archdeacon’s farewell sermon. The latter had faithfully toiled there for twenty-seven years, and there was scarcely a dry eye. The interpreter was the first to break down, then followed the archdeacon himself, together with the congregation. For a few moments there was a pause; it was with difficulty that he finished his discourse. ‘I had wished,’ wrote the bishop, ‘to express to him personally my sense of the praiseworthy manner in which he had, single-handed, managed this large district. It needs more labourers—one at Churchill, and another at Trout Lake. One great difficulty is the number of languages spoken. At York and Severn, Cree; at Trout Lake, a mixture of Cree and Saulteaux; and at Churchill, Chipwyan and Eskimo, which have no resemblance either to each other or to the Cree or Saulteaux. I have been busy ever since coming here, for besides the Indian there is a somewhat large English congregation, York having ever been a place of great importance in the country, although it is now much less so than formerly. I conduct an English school daily, give lessons in Cree to Mr. Winter, and twice a week I give lessons to the European and native servants of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Altogether I am as fully employed as I have ever been at Moose; but I cannot but know that with me the sun has passed the meridian, and that it behoves one to work while it is called to-day.
‘In January I go northward two hundred miles to Churchill, the most northerly inhabited spot in the diocese of Moosonee. It is a very dreary place. The wife of the gentleman in charge there, the sister of one of our missionaries, is often years without seeing the face of a civilised woman, while the intensity of the cold there is as great almost as in any spot on the earth’s surface. You may conceive with what joy a visitor is received. What a welcome I may expect on my arrival! The Indians there will be quite strange to me; with their language I am not at all acquainted. I had never seen one until I came here, and here only one—a poor girl, now a happy, comfortable, Christian lassie, with an English tongue, but who was cast out as an encumbrance by her unnatural relatives. In June I go on a tour to Trout Lake and Severn; this will occupy me nearly two months, and in August I once more set off for England.’
The voyage from York Factory in the autumn of 1880 was the most tedious and stormy on record, occupying ten weeks instead of five. It was the middle of November ere Bishop Horden reached England, when once more he had the joy of greeting his wife and children. And now followed a continual round of preaching, speaking, and travelling, with very heavy daily correspondence. At many a meeting the bishop held his audience in rapt attention with the story of the rise and progress of the Moose mission, with graphic descriptions of parts of the Moose diocese, with accounts of the work in the six several districts into which it was now divided, each under the care of an ordained clergyman. Charters had been granted to two companies for the construction of railways from the corn-growing provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to the shores of Hudson’s Bay, one or both of which would run for the greater part through the Moosonee diocese. The bishop pleaded for help, therefore, for a church extension fund. He would often close his address with an Indian’s account of the condition of his people when in a state of heathenism, giving it in the native Cree, with a literal translation.