d hotch-potch of--what in the world to call
them? Huts? Hovels? One has a respect for his mother-tongue,--above all,
if he have assumed obligations toward it by professing the function of a
writer; and any term by which human dwellings are designated must be
taken _cum grano salis_, if applied to these structures. "It cannot be
that this is Christian Hopedale!" Softly, my good Sir; it can be, for it
is!

Reader, do you ever say, "Whew-w-w"? There were three minutes, on the
30th of July last, during which that piece of interjectional eloquence
seemed to your humble servant to embody the whole dictionary!

To get breath, let us turn again to the mission-mansion, which now,
under the effect of sudden contrast, seems too magnificent to be real,
as if it had been built by enchantment rather than by the labor of man.
This is situated half a dozen rods from the shore, at a slight elevation
above it, and looks pleasantly up the bay to the southwest. The site has
been happily chosen. Here, for a wonder, is an acre or two of land which
one may call level,--broader toward the shore, and tapering to a point
as it runs back. To the right, as we face it, the ground rises not very
brokenly, giving a small space for the hunch of huts, then falls quickly
to the sea; while beyond, and toward the ocean, islands twenty miles
deep close in and shelter all. To the left go up again the perpetual
hills, hills. Everywhere around the bay save here, on island and main,
the immitigable gneiss hills rise bold and sudden from the water, now
dimly impurpled with lichen, now in nakedness of rock surface, yet
beautified in their bare severity by alternating and finely waving
stripes of lightest and darkest gray,--as if to show sympathy with the
billowy heaving of the sea.

Forward to the mansion. In front a high, strong, neat picket-fence
incloses a pretty flower-yard, in which some exotics, tastefully
arranged, seem to be flourishing well. We knock; with no manner of
haste, and with no seeming of cordial willingness, we are admitted, are
shown into a neat room of good size, and entertained by a couple of the
brethren.

One of these only, and he alone among the missionaries, it appeared,
spoke English. This was an elderly, somewhat cold and forbidding
personage, of Secession sympathies. He had just returned from Europe
after two years' absence, was fresh from London, and put on the true
Exeter-Hall whine in calling ours "a n-dreadful n-war." He did