II.

UR first personal acquaintance with the Moravian missionaries of Labrador was during a summer trip as far as Nain in 1904. We had met a few Eskimo sailors or fishermen at Rigolet and other places in southern Labrador, but it was at Hopedale, one of the older Moravian missions, that we came across them in any considerable numbers. It was Sunday morning when our steamer arrived, and the missionaries and lay helpers came down to bid us welcome. Against a dull, grey sky, and backed by low, rounded, sterile hills, the mission buildings, with their great red roofs and neatly painted walls, presented an appearance still more attractive from their forbidding surroundings.

The Eskimos, far from being the squalid, unkempt-looking creatures, whom we too often associate with the name, wore, the women especially, neat and clean attire, in some cases of an immaculate whiteness, cut in native. style, a short tunic with flaps on front and back, and seal-skin boots or shoes. The chief difference between the men and women's attire was the longer flaps of the latter, and that their glossy black hair was neatly parted and knotted on the back of the head, while that of the men was squarely VOL. LXII. No. 6.

MORAVIAN MISSION AT MAKKOVIK, LABRADOR.

cut off below the ears. They are a short, stout, cheerful-looking people, of brown or copper color, but not so dark as our American Indians.

The entrance to the mission premises is through a strong fence or stockade, a survival of the time when such construction was necessary for defence from raid or robber. Our steamer anchored in the offing while we went ashore in the ship's boat to a well-built wharf. Being Sunday morning, most of the Eskimos, who are often absent during the week on hunting or fishing excursions, were home. We were conducted to the chapel, a large, long room on the ground floor, equipped with comfortable, high-backed benches, platform and reading desk, and a small pipe

at

noblest of all English hymns, Toplady's "Rock of Ages." The service is slightly liturgical, but the readings and responses all give evidence of careful religious training.

It is one of the miracles of missions that these devoted Moravian brethren, who found these aborigines of Greenland and Labrador unclean and brutal and murderous, have raised them by their faithful ministrations and the power of the Gospel to the dignity of men and often to the fellowship of saints. They reduced their rude jargon to a written language

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into which they translated the Holy Scriptures, a copious hymnary, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress,' a copy of which we possess, and other books. Through the generous aid of the British and Foreign Bible Society, these Scriptures have been printed in Eskimo and these once ignorant savages can read the oracles of God in their own mother tongue wherein they were born. On the centenary anniversary of the Bible Society, contemporaneous with the meetings in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, and in many other of the great centres of civilization, was held a memorial service in this out-of-the-way place, cut off from the rest of the world during the long months of winter by storm and ice and snow.

The devout observance of the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and of Christian baptism, and of the quaint Moravian institution of the lovefeast, was to those who witnessed it profoundly impressive. The Eskimos exhibit much musical talent, and sometimes one of the natives will preside