On the following day Jacques called according to promise, and the three friends set off together to visit the Indian village. This missionary station was under the management of a Wesleyan clergyman, Pastor Conway by name, an excellent man, of about forty-five years of age, with an energetic mind and body, a bald head, a mild, expressive countenance, and a robust constitution. He was admirably qualified for his position, having a natural aptitude for every sort of work that man is usually called on to perform. His chief care was for the instruction of the Indians, whom he had induced to settle around him, in the great and all-important truths of Christianity. He invented an alphabet, and taught them to write and read their own language. He commenced the laborious task of translating the Scriptures into the Cree language; and being an excellent musician, he instructed his converts to sing in parts the psalms and Wesleyan hymns, many of which are exceedingly beautiful. A school was also established and a church built under his superintendence, so that the natives assembled in an orderly way in a commodious sanctuary every Sabbath day to worship God; while the children were instructed, not only in the Scriptures, and made familiar with the narrative of the humiliation and exaltation of our blessed Saviour, but were also taught the elementary branches of a secular education. But good Pastor Conway’s energy did not stop here. Nature had gifted him with that peculiar genius which is powerfully expressed in the term “a jack-of-all-trades.” He could turn his hand to anything; and being, as we have said, an energetic man, he did turn his hand to almost everything. If anything happened to get broken, the pastor could either mend it himself or direct how it was to be done. If a house was to be built for a new family of red men, who had never handled a saw or hammer in their lives, and had lived up to that time in tents, the pastor lent a hand to begin it, drew out the plan (not a very complicated thing, certainly), set them fairly at work, and kept his eye on it until it was finished. In short, the worthy pastor was everything to everybody, “that by all means he might gain some.”
Under such management the village flourished as a matter of course, although it did not increase very rapidly owing to the almost unconquerable aversion of North American Indians to take up a settled habitation.
It was to this little hamlet, then, that our three friends directed their steps. On arriving, they found Pastor Conway in a sort of workshop, giving directions to an Indian who stood with a soldering-iron in one hand and a sheet of tin in the other, which he was about to apply to a curious-looking, half-finished machine that bore some resemblance to a canoe.
“Ah, my friend Jacques!” he exclaimed as the hunter approached him; “the very man I wished to see. But I beg pardon, gentlemen—strangers, I perceive. You are heartily welcome. It is seldom that I have the pleasure of seeing new friends in my wild dwelling. Pray come with me to my house.”
Pastor Conway shook hands with Harry and Hamilton with a degree of warmth that evinced the sincerity of his words. The young men thanked him and accepted the invitation.
As they turned to quit the workshop, the pastor observed Jacques’s eye fixed, with a puzzled expression of countenance, on his canoe.
“You have never seen anything like that before, I dare say?” said he, with a smile.
“No, sir; I never did see such a queer machine afore.”
“It is a tin canoe, with which I hope to pass through many miles of country this spring, on my way to visit a tribe of Northern Indians; and it was about this very thing that I wanted to see you, my friend.”
Jacques made no reply, but cast a look savouring very slightly of contempt on the unfinished canoe as they turned and went away.