Careful examination of the candidate still further convinced the bishop of his suitability, and when the annual ship arrived bringing an English clergyman, the Rev. E. A. Watkins, destined for Fort George, he no longer delayed, but ordained Mr. Horden both deacon and priest, Mr. Watkins presenting. The bishop and Mr. Watkins had then to hasten on their several ways, lest early winter might overtake them ere they reached their destinations. And so the ardent, earnest young catechist was left at Moose, pastor as well as teacher of his flock, known to and esteemed by every man, woman and child of the Indian families who resorted thither during the summer season, and supremely happy in his work and position.
The home in which he and his wife dwelt was of the simplest, its walls were of plain pine wood; but within it was enlivened by the baby prattle of their first-born child, baptized by the bishop, Elizabeth Anderson. Without, it was surrounded by a garden, in which some hardy flowers grew side by side with potatoes, turnips, peas, and barley. Moose is not by any means bare of wild flowers, and in mosses it is very rich, whilst goodly clumps of trees waved their branches in the breeze on an island only five minutes’ walk from the house. During the winter the missionary and his family, together with the three or four gentlemen of the Hudson’s Bay Company, with their servants, and a few sick and aged Indians and children, were the sole inhabitants of the settlement. Then Mr. Horden gave himself up to his little school, to his translation work, and to such building operations as in course of time became necessary—a school-house, a church, a new dwelling-house. After dinner he was occupied with hammer, chisel, saw and plane until dark. In the evening he gave instruction to a few young men.
One such, whom he employed for a time as a school assistant in later years, he had the pleasure of sending in due course for ordination by the Bishop of Rupert’s Land, who appointed him to the charge of Albany station, one hundred miles north of Moose, an important outpost, at which eighty families of Indians congregated during the summer. Hannah Bay, another post, fifty miles east of Moose, was resorted to by fifty families; Rupert’s House, one hundred miles east, was frequented by sixty families; and Kevoogoonisse, 430 miles south, by thirty families. All these places were to be visited by Mr. Horden, as well as Martin’s Falls, three hundred miles from Albany, and Osnaburg, two hundred miles further on; also Flying Post, one hundred from Kevoogoonisse, and New Brunswick, one hundred from Flying Post.
This was sufficient to appal the mind and daunt the courage of one still young and inexperienced. It did not daunt John Horden. He longed only to teach all who were thus placed under his ministerial charge. The journeys must be made at particular seasons, as throughout the greater part of the year no Indians were at the trading-posts.
CHAPTER IV
WINTER AT MOOSE FORT
The four seasons are called in the Indian tongue, Sekwun, Nepin, Tukwaukin, and Pepooa. Spring begins about the middle or end of May, when the ice in the river breaks up. Vegetation proceeds rapidly. In a few days the bushes look green, and within a fortnight the grass and trees appear in summer garb. Sometimes the ‘breaking-up’ is attended with danger, often with inconvenience.
In the spring of 1860 the little settlement was visited with a disastrous flood. The ground all around is low, not a hill within seventy miles. Mr. Horden was occupied in building his new church—the frame already rested on the foundations. One Sunday morning it floated off and took an excursion of nearly a quarter of a mile, and with the aid of ropes, poles, and other implements it had to be dragged back to its former position and strongly secured. ‘The ice,’ said Mr. Horden, ‘made much more havoc than it did in ’57. A few days after the water had subsided I found my garden thickly planted with ice blocks of a considerable size; but our gardening operations were not impeded, we were able to raise a large quantity of potatoes of very good quality. The effects of a flood are not always evident at once; it is after the lapse of months that they become apparent, when the poor Indian on arriving at his winter hunting-grounds finds that the water has been there, and destroyed nearly the whole of the rabbits. He is reduced to great straits, and the energies of the whole family are required to keep them from starvation.’
Rabbits are the staple food of the Indians in the season. The skins, being of little value for barter, are used by them as blankets, the women sewing them very neatly together.