‘The Indians are all busy haymaking. They go up the river some distance, and there find abundance of grass, and bring it down in boats, spreading it on a large field, where they make it into hay. There are stables for the cattle, but there are no horses. There are four or five houses for the workpeople, and on a large plain are some Indian tents—and the gardens are looking well—the potatoes and turnips look as if good crops would be secured, a matter for congratulation, as this is by no means always the case. Day follows day, and the last arrived, when I gave a treat to all the children.
‘Our farewell service is held, and it is a very solemn one, for every one at Fort George is very dear to me. I wish all and everyone good-bye, for I start early on the morrow; but early as it is, everyone is on the river’s bank to see me as I step into a large canoe, which is to take me seven miles to the Mink, lying in Stromness harbour. Several farewell volleys are fired, and I am speedily out of sight of my hospitable friends and on my way to the old house at Moose.’
To the bishop’s great joy and thankfulness a young missionary, Mr. Walton, arrived by the ship in the autumn of 1892. He was destined for the distant post of Ungava. The bishop was much pleased with him, and, after due examination, ordained him, and sent him on to Fort George to fill meanwhile the place of Mr. Peck, who was by doctor’s advice to take his wife and children to England by the ship homeward bound.
Mr. Peck would, the bishop hoped, return in the following May, to proceed to Ungava with the Rev. W. Walton.
The journey to Ungava is toilsome and very difficult. Mr. Peck had visited the post in 1885, having been driven back three times before he succeeded in crossing the Labrador peninsula, eight hundred miles. He was repaid at length by meeting with many Eskimo anxious for the message of salvation. The thought of the pressing need for a missionary to this far-off spot had ever since lain ‘heavy on the heart of the bishop.’ He said, ‘If we go to the North Pole, we shall be still in the diocese of Moosonee.’ The ice-bound regions visited by Sir John Franklin, Admiral McClintock, Captain Parry, and other Arctic explorers, are nearly all in this diocese.
The bishop worked on, assisted by the Rev. J. A. Newnham, who had returned from a visit to Montreal, bringing with him a wife, who took the deepest interest in the women and girls, and proved a great addition to the mission party. The native pastor, the Rev. E. Richards, was also staying at Moose at this time, especially to help in the revision of the Bible translations.
CHAPTER XXI
LAST DAYS
Towards the end of November the bishop was taken suddenly ill. We have the account of his attack in his own words, written on January 2, 1893, by his daughter Chrissie from his dictation. ‘Three-and-fifty years ago Christmas was spent by me in bed; my life was almost given up. I was suffering from typhus fever, and my doctor said that, had I not had a constitution of lead, I must have succumbed to the virulence of the disease. God raised me up again, and eventually sent me to the land of snow, and I am now spending my forty-second Christmas in connection with it. And how very joyous every Christmas has been up to the present one! How wonderfully good my health has always been, how I could always join the frolic and fun of the youngsters! I felt as one of them; the difference in our age was as nothing. We were all children. This year, too, the church has been beautifully decorated; the splendid trees have been laden with their precious fruits, faces have brightened with joy as of yore: but I have seen nothing of them; the mingled voices of childhood have been unheard.