weep and say,
"Lord, have mercy upon me and on the apathetic Christian world."

That was the hardest question a human being ever asked me. To tell him
of a want of men, or a lack of money, to carry the glad tidings of
salvation to him and his people, would only have filled his mind with
doubts as to the genuineness of the religion enjoyed by a people so
numerous and rich as he knew the whites were. So I tried to give them
some idea of the world's population, and the vast number yet unconverted
to Christianity. I told him the Churches were at work in many places
and among many nations, but that many years would pass away before all
the world would be supplied with Missionaries.

"How many winters will pass by before that time comes?" he asked.

"A great many, I fear," was my answer.

He put his hands through his long hair, once as black as a raven's wing,
but now becoming silvered, and replied: "These white hairs show that I
have lived many winters, and am getting old. My countrymen at Red River
on the south of us, and here at Norway House on the north of us, have
Missionaries, and churches, and schools; and we have none. I do not
wish to die until we have a church and a school."

The story of this old man's appeal woke up the good people of the
Churches, and something was soon done for these Indians. I visited them
twice a year by canoe and dog-train, and found them anxious for
religious instruction and progress.

At first I sent to live among them my faithful interpreter, Timothy
Bear. He worked faithfully and did good service. He was not a strong
man physically, and could not stand much exposure. To live in, he had
my large leather tent, which was made of the prepared skins of the
buffalo. One night a great tornado swept over the country, and
Timothy's tent was carried away, and then the drenching rains fell upon
him and his. A severe cold resulted, and when word reached me several
weeks after at Norway House, it was that my trusted friend was
hopelessly ill, but was still endeavouring to keep at his duties.

So great was my anxiety to go and comfort him that I started out with my
dog-trains so soon after the winter set in that that trip very nearly
proved to be my last. The greater part of that journey was performed
upon Lake Winnipeg. Very frequently on the northern end of that lake
the ice, which there forms first, is broken up by the fierce winds from
the southern end, which, being three hundre