132 Snapshots from the North Pacvfe.

Kaska, or Cassiar, as miners call them. These Natives are
not the miserable beings I had heard them described, but
pleasant in temper and responsive to kindness.

“Physically, they are more slim than the coast Indians,
but quite as strong and intelligent. The traders tell me
they are fine hunters, and from the miners I heard that
those who worked for them were fairly industrious ; so that
they are not in the state of savagery I had heard described.

“No white man has studied their language, which is
probably allied to the Athabascan family ; but I found they
did nob recognize any words in the Bishop of Selkirk’s Tinne
translations

“Here I want to post a man of God who will love these
people and seck to save them. He must have a pioneer’s
spirit.

“T used to set the blue-eyed four-year-old on my knee and
tell him of the child Jesus, of His dear love and His precious
death for him. His eyes, full of wonder, were fixed on
mine, and he would say, ‘ Mother never told me this. Why
did not mother tell me?’ I knew why: she did not know.
When I told him God loved him, he would say, ‘ What 1s it?’
and then, ‘Where is He? Who told Him about me?’ ‘Is
He older than you? Did you see Him?’ The mother was
almost as simple as her child and as ignorant of divine things.

“JT would not think of denying that there is a repulsive
side to Heathenism such as the missionary cannot but see
and feel when he becomes familiar with it. Be sure it is
no work for physically or mentally feeble men to enter
upon; it requires the best qualities the best men are
endowed with. I mean not the cleverest, but God’s best
men.

“Tn all that morals can accomplish, among all the loftiest
ambitions that burn within us, of all human activities and
glorious endeavours, there is nothing so great, so honourable,
and so productive of results unbounded by time as the
pioneer pouring of heavenly thought into a new language
and binding new tribes to God by conscious sonship.”