One day at one of these places where I was holding some extended services, I said to the friendly Indians who were around me: “Would you not like to read this Book for yourselves?” A chorus of hearty affirmative answers, was the quick response. It did not take us long to organise our school, for it was indeed a primitive affair. I was fortunate in having a goodly number of syllabic Bibles, which, at a great deal of trouble, we had brought with us in our canoe. We had carried them across many a portage and had guarded them from injury in many a storm. Not one person in that audience except my boatmen, knew a letter or syllabic character. We had no primary books, which are considered so essential in organising a school that has to begin at first principles; we had not even a slate, pencil, paper, or blackboard. However, “necessity is the mother of invention,” and it was so here.
Near at hand was a huge rock that towered up like a house, one side of it being as smooth as a wall. This constituted an admirable substitute for a blackboard. Burnt sticks from the camp-fire, where our fish and bear’s meat had been cooked, were used as substitutes for chalk. (Our smaller illustration shows thirty-six syllabic characters with their names.)
After a few words of explanation the work of memorising the characters began.
A, E, Oo, Ah. It was just like a lot of little children in a primary school beginning with A, B, C. Over, and over again, we repeated them, one after the other, until my mixed audience became familiarised with the sounds. Thus we studied them for hours. At first the interest in the work was very great, and from the old men of eighty, to the boys and girls of six or eight the best of attention was paid. They seemed to vie with one another in their efforts to see which could master them most quickly.
After a time the interest flagged considerably, especially among the older men, as to them, these characters alone, were as yet, unmeaning sounds. Some of them got up and lit their pipes, and moving around, divided their time between the lesson and the smoking. Of course I had to let them smoke. I might have found it a difficult matter to have stopped them if I had been so foolish as to have tried. So I told them some pleasant stories, as we toiled on at our lesson, it was not many hours before a number of my undisciplined pupils had a fairly good idea of the names of the characters. Knowing that I could arouse the interest of the most apathetic among them when I began to combine the characters into words, I asked for their earnest attention while I proceeded in my work.
I marked out some simple words such as:
(pa-pa,)
(ma-ma,)