"Hopedale."
"H-o-p-e-d-a-l-e! Where the Devil's that?"
"A hundred and fifty miles beyond Cape Harrison." (Cape Weback on the map.)
Inarticulate gust of astonishment in response.
"Where did he say?" inquires some one in the farther schooner.
"——! He's been to the North Pole!"
To him it was all North Pole beyond Cape Harrison, and he evidently looked upon us much as he might upon the apparition of the Flying Dutchman, or some other spectre-ship.
The supply-ship which yearly visits the Moravian stations on this coast anchored in the harbor of Hopedale ten minutes before us: we had been rapidly gaining upon her in our Flying Yankee for the last twenty miles. Signal-guns had answered each other from ship and shore; the missionaries were soon on board, and men and women were falling into each other's arms with joyful, mournful kisses and tears. The ship returned some missionaries after long absence; it brought also a betrothed lady, next day to be married: there was occasion for joy, even beyond wont on these occasions, when, year by year, the missionary-exiles feel with bounding blood the touch of civilization and fatherland. But now those who came on board brought sad tidings,—for one of their ancient colaborers, closely akin to the new comers, had within a day or two died. Love and death the world over; and also the hope of love without death.
Our eyes have been drawn to them; it is time to have a peep at Hopedale.
I had been so long looking forward to this place, had heard and thought of it so much as an old mission-station, where was a village of Christian Esquimaux, that I fully expected to see a genuine village, with houses, wharves, streets. It would not equal our towns, of course. The people were not cleanly; the houses would be unpainted, and poor in comparison with ours. I had taken assiduous pains to tone down my expectations, and felt sure that I had moderated them liberally,—nay, had been philosophical enough to make disappointment impossible, and open the opposite possibility of a pleasant surprise. I conceived that in this respect I had done the discreet and virtuous thing, and silently moralized, not without self-complacency, upon the folly of carrying through the world expectations which the fact, when seen, could only put out of countenance. "Make your expectations zero," I said with Sartor.