Forward to the mansion. In front a high, strong, neat picket-fence incloses a pretty flower-yard, in which some exotics, tastefully arranged, seem to be flourishing well. We knock; with no manner of haste, and with no seeming of cordial willingness, we are admitted, are shown into a neat room of good size, and entertained by a couple of the brethren.
One of these only, and he alone among the missionaries, it appeared, spoke English. This was an elderly, somewhat cold and forbidding personage, of Secession sympathies. He had just returned from Europe after two years' absence, was fresh from London, and put on the true Exeter-Hall whine in calling ours "a n-dreadful n-war." He did not press the matter, however, nor in any manner violate the rôle of cold courtesy which he had assumed; and it was chiefly by the sudden check and falling of the countenance, when he found us thorough Unionist, that his sympathies were betrayed. Wine and rusks were brought in, both delicious,—the latter seeming like ambrosia, after the dough cannon-balls with which our "head cook at the Tremont House" had regaled us. After a stay of civil brevity we took our leave, and so closed an interview in which we had been treated with irreproachable politeness, but in which the heart was forbidden to have any share.
First the missionaries; now the natives. The squat and squalid huts, stuck down upon the earth without any pretence of raised foundation, and jumbled together, corner to side, back to front, any way, as if some wind had blown them there, did not improve on acquaintance. The walls, five feet high, were built of poles some five inches in diameter; the low roof, made of similar poles, was heavily heaped with earth. What with this deep earth-covering, and with their grovelling toward the earth in such a flat and neighborly fashion, they had a dreadfully under-foot look, and seemed rather dens than houses. Many were ragged and rotten, all inconceivably cheerless. No outhouses, no inclosures, no vegetation, no relief of any kind. About and between them the swardless ground is all trodden into mud. Prick-eared Esquimaux dogs huddle, sneak, bark, and snarl around, with a free fight now and then, in which they all fall upon the one that is getting the worst of it. Before the principal group of huts, in the open space between them and the mansion, a dead dog lies rotting; children lounge listlessly, and babies toddle through the slutch about it. Here and there a full-grown Esquimaux, in greasy and uncouth garb, loiters, doing nothing, looking nothing.
I, for one, was completely overcrowed by the impression of a bare and aimless existence, and could not even wonder. Christian Hopedale! "Leave all hope, ye that enter here!"
At 5 p. m. the chapel-bell rings, and at once the huts swarm. We follow the crowd. They enter the chapel by a door at the end nearest their dens, and seat themselves, the women at the farther, the men at the hither extreme, all facing a raised desk at the middle of one side. Behind them, opposite this pulpit, is an organ. Presently, from a door at the farther end, the missionaries file in, some twelve in number; one enters the pulpit, the others take seats on either side of him, facing the audience, and at a dignified remove. The conductor of the service now rises, makes an address in Esquimaux a minute and a half long, then gives out a hymn,—the hymns numbered in German, as numbers, to any extent, are wanting to the Esquimaux language. All the congregation join in a solid old German tune, keeping good time, and making, on the whole, better congregational music than I ever heard elsewhere,—unless a Baptist conventicle in London, Bloomsbury Chapel, furnish the exception. After this another, then another; at length, when half a dozen or more have been sung, missionaries and congregation rise, the latter stand in mute and motionless respect, the missionaries file out with dignity at their door; and when the last has disappeared, the others begin quietly to disperse.
This form of worship is practised at the hour named above on each weekday, and the natives attend with noticeable promptitude. There are no prayers, and the preliminary address in this case was exceptional.
Sunday, July 31.—I had inquired at what hour the worship would begin this day, and, with some hesitancy, had been answered, "At half past nine." But the Colonel also had asked, and his interlocutor, after consulting a card, said, "At ten o'clock." At ten we went ashore. Finding the chapel-door still locked, I seated myself on a rock in front of the mission-house, to wait. The sun was warm (the first warm day for a month); the mosquitoes swarmed in myriads; I sat there long, wearily beating them off. Faces peeped out at me from the windows, then withdrew. Presently Bradford joined me, and began also to fight mosquitoes. More faces at the windows; but when I looked towards them, thinking to discover some token of hospitable invitation, they quickly disappeared. After half an hour, the master of the supply-ship came up, and entered into conversation; in a minute one of the brethren appeared at the door, and invited him to enter, but without noticing Bradford and myself. I took my skiff and rowed to the schooner. Fifteen minutes later the chapel-bell rang.
I confess to some spleen that day against the missionaries. When I expressed it, Captain French, the pilot, an old, prudent, pious man, "broke out."
"Them are traders," said he. "I don't call 'em missionaries; I call 'em traders. They live in luxury; the natives work for 'em, and get for pay just what they choose to give 'em. They fleece the Esquimaux; they take off of 'em all but the skin. They are just traders!"
My spleen did not last. There was some cause of coldness,—I know not what. The missionaries afterwards became cordial, visited the schooner, and exchanged presents with us. I believe them good men. If their relation to the natives assume in some degree a pecuniary aspect, it is due to the necessity of supporting the mission by the profits of traffic. If they preserve a stately distance toward the Esquimaux, it is to retain influence over them. If they allow the native mind to confound somewhat the worship of God with the worship of its teachers, it is that the native mind cannot get beyond personal relations, and must worship something tangible. That they are not at all entangled in the routine and material necessities of their position I do not assert; that they do not carry in it something of noble and self-forgetful duty nothing I have seen will persuade me.