had
already invited all the Indians at the Post to the ceremony. Great
preparations were being made. If the wedding were put off even a
single day, everybody would be curious to know why; and sooner or later
it would be known that he had had to bow to the will of the priest.
The thought rankled. So he went to the Factor and told him the whole
affair.

"Ma brither," said the Factor, "we are auld freens; it is weel that we
shud staun' thegither. If ye will trade a' yir furs wi' me this day,
I'll get the meenister o' the Presybyterian Kirk tae mairry yir
gran'dochter. He'll be gled eneuch tae gi'e Father Jois a dour by
mairryin' twa o' his fowk. Sell me yir furs, an' I'll warrant ye ye'll
hae the laff on Father Jois."

MISSIONARIES AND INDIANS

That settled it. Factor Mackenzie got all the furs Oo-koo-hoo and his
family possessed. The Factor and the hunter were now the best of
friends, and they even went so far as to exchange presents--and that's
going some . . . for a Scotsman.

Should the foregoing amuse the Protestant reader, the following may be
of interest to the Roman Catholic. One winter, while halting at a
certain Hudson's Bay post, I met a Protestant clergyman, who having
spent a number of years as a missionary among the natives on the coast
of Hudson Bay excited my interest as to his work among the Indians.
That night, after supper, I questioned him as to his spiritual work
among the "barbarians" of the forest, and in the presence of the
Hudson's Bay trader, he turned to me and, with the air of being
intensely bored by the subject, he replied: "Mr. Heming . . . the only
interest I ever take in the Indian . . . is when I bury him."

But while I have cited two types of clergymen I have known--the name of
the priest being, of course, fictitious--merely to point out the kind
of missionaries that should never be sent among the Indians, I not only
wish to state that they are very much the exception to the rule, but I
also want to make known my unbounded respect and admiration for that
host of splendid men--and women--of all denominations, who have devoted
their lives to the spiritual welfare of the people of the wilderness,
and some of whom have already left behind them hallowed names of
imperishable memory.

But the lot of the missionary among the Indians is not altogether a
joyous one. In his distant and isolated outpost there are privations
to endure and hardships to suffer. Frequently, too, it