Sunday, 9th.—Safe at Ramah, thank God, and not out in the fog, which now envelopes sea and land. The last two days have been a trial of patience. We have seen the entrance to this Nullatatok Bay all the time, and longed to reach the desired haven, yet have not been able, owing to calms and contrary currents. This Labrador coast becomes ever bolder and grander as one sails northward. Here the snowy mountains are quite Alpine in appearance. This morning the thick mist hides all but the base of these magnificent hills, but the enormous rocky masses, rising so quickly from the water's edge into the heights veiled from us, give some idea of their grandeur. Our captain is, indeed, well acquainted with their aspect or he would not have ventured to enter this bay under such circumstances.
"RAMARSUK" (NEAT LITTLE RAMAH).[ToC]
Missionaries all over the world are perhaps too fond of multiplying Scripture names of their stations. In our own fields we have already three Bethanys and three Bethesdas. We should have had three Ramahs too, had not the natives of Australia themselves greatly improved the appellation of theirs by adding to it a syllable meaning "home" or mother's place. It seemed so homelike to the Christian Aborigines, who moved thither from Ebenezer, the older station, that they at once called it Ramahyuck (Ramah, our home). Perhaps as the Ramah on the Moskito Coast is also known as Ramah Key, the northern station in Labrador, founded in 1871 to mark the cenutry of that mission, should abide plain, simple "Ramah," otherwise the above combination would, I understand, have suited the genius of the language, and its significance. "Neat little Ramah" certainly expresses the character of the lonely missionary settlement.
The village, if one may dignify this small group of human dwellings by that name, stands on a little plain evidently won by degrees from the sea for the successive beaches can be traced. The mission premises, the old house, the new house, and the church with its little belfry, are one continuous building facing the bay southward, and exactly one hundred feet in length. Behind are the store buildings, and the low turf huts of the natives stretch westward along the strand. They are so like grassy mounds, that from any distance one would ask, "But where do the Eskimoes live?"
The missionary dwelling is primitive enough, even as enlarged. During our brief stay here, I have the honour of occupying the original house, built about twenty years ago. It is but a room divided by a curtain, but it served the first missionary couple here as dwelling-room, bedroom, church, and everything else. What a grand view there is from the window over the deep land-locked bay, in which the "Harmony" is lying at the only available anchorage. No one would guess that it would take more than half-an-hour to row across the smooth water, or in winter to walk over its frozen surface to the opposite shore, where, as on this side, precipitous bluffs rise almost from the water's edge. All nature around is on a grand scale, and those snow-clad mountains, which look over the shoulders of the nearer cliffs, are quite Alpine in effect. Climb to the dizzy heights, which tower threateningly six or seven hundred feet above the station and you find you are not half way to the summit of the nearest hill. It must, indeed, be a magnificent view from thence towards the great mountains in the interior, whose everlasting snows cover long ridges at least five or six thousand feet in height. Seawards, the Ramah Hill, a remarkable perpendicular rock, surmounts the nearer cliffs. It looks as if, standing on the crag, one could drop a stone into the water at its base, 1000 feet below.
All this is grand, but grander still is the quiet, unconscious devotion of the worthy missionary pair, who live in this lonely bay, tending the little Christian congregation already gathered, and seeking the salvation of the heathen Eskimoes to the north. Of these there are perhaps sixty or seventy dwelling between Ramah and Cape Chudley; the northern point of Labrador. I am heartily glad Mr. and Mrs. Schulze have now a helper in Mr. Eckhardt, and trust the little missionary band will have increasing joy in souls won for the Lord.
