also arrived to prepare the machinery for
cutting the timber; boxes were being unpacked, and weird iron "parts"
revealed to us, that had all the interest of a Chinese puzzle, with
the added pleasure of knowing that they stood for much if we solved
the problems rightly.

When next we saw the mill it was spring, and the puffing smoke and
white heaps of lumber that graced the point and met our vision as we
rounded Breakheart Point will not soon be forgotten. Only one trouble
had proved insurmountable. The log-hauler would not deliver the goods
to the rotary saw. Later, with the knowledge that the whole apparatus
was upside down, it did not seem so surprising after all. One accident
also marred the year's record. While a party of children had been
crossing the ice in the harbour to school, a treacherous rapid had
caused it to give way and leave a number of them in the water. One of
my English volunteers, being a first-class athlete, had by swimming
saved five lives, but two had been lost, and the young fellow himself
so badly chilled that it had taken the hot body of one of the fathers
of the rescued children, wrapped up in bed with him in lieu of a
hot-water bottle, to restore his circulation.

The second fall was our hardest period. The bills for our lumber sold
had not been paid in time for us to purchase the absolutely essential
stock of food for the winter; and if we could not get a store of food,
we knew that our men could not go logging. It was food, not cash,
which they needed in the months when their own slender stock of
provisions gave out, and when all communication was cut off by the
frozen sea.

For a venture which seemed to us problematical in its outcome, we did
not dare to borrow money or to induce friends to invest; and of course
Mission funds were not available. For the day has not yet arrived when
all those who seek by their gifts to hasten the coming of the Kingdom
of God on earth recognize that to give the opportunity to men to
provide decently for their families and homes is as effective work for
the Master, whose first attribute was love, as patching up the
unfortunate victims of semi-starvation. The inculcation of the
particular intellectual conception which the donor may hold of
religion, or as to how, after death, the soul can get into heaven, is,
as the result of the Church teaching, still considered far the most
important line of effort. The emphasis on hospitals is second, partly
at least be