ears. The ship
returned some missionaries after long absence; it brought also a
betrothed lady, next day to be married: there was occasion for joy, even
beyond wont on these occasions, when, year by year, the
missionary-exiles feel with bounding blood the touch of civilization
and fatherland. But now those who came on board brought sad
tidings,--for one of their ancient colaborers, closely akin to the new
comers, had within a day or two died. Love and death the world over; and
also the hope of love without death.

Our eyes have been drawn to them; it is time to have a peep at Hopedale.

I had been so long looking forward to this place, had heard and thought
of it so much as an old mission-station, where was a village of
Christian Esquimaux, that I fully expected to see a genuine village,
with houses, wharves, streets. It would not equal our towns, of course.
The people were not cleanly; the houses would be unpainted, and poor in
comparison with ours. I had taken assiduous pains to tone down my
expectations, and felt sure that I had moderated them liberally,--nay,
had been philosophical enough to make disappointment impossible, and
open the opposite possibility of a pleasant surprise. I conceived that
in this respect I had done the discreet and virtuous thing, and silently
moralized, not without self-complacency, upon the folly of carrying
through the world expectations which the fact, when seen, could only put
out of countenance. "Make your expectations zero," I said with Sartor.

I need not put them _below_ zero. That would be too cold an anticipation
to carry even to this latitude. Zero: a poor, shabby village these
Christian Esquimaux will have built, even after nigh a century of
Moravian tuition. Still it will be a real village, not a distracted
jumble of huts, such as we had seen below.

The prospect had been curiously pleasing. True, I desired much to see
the unadulterated Esquimaux. But that would come, I had supposed, in the
further prosecution of our voyage. Here I could see what they would
become under loving instruction,--could gauge their capabilities, and
thus answer one of the prime questions I had brought.

A real Hopedale, after all this wild, sterile, hopeless coast! A touch
of civilization, to contrast with the impression of that Labradorian
rag-tag existence which we had hitherto seen, and which one could not
call human without coughing! I like deserts and wilds,--but, if you
please, by way of co