me
from Newfoundland, according to appointment, and arrived in London on
the 29th of October.

Circumstances, apparently the most unpropitious, frequently
contribute, in the course of Providence, to promote the most important
and most happy issues. While the brethren at Nain continued with
unwearied diligence to make known the salvation of Christ among the
Esquimaux, they observed with grief, that their deep-rooted heathenish
superstitions, and the violent and gross, but natural evil passions
which they delighted to indulge, and which led to the frequent
perpetration of adultery and murder, obstructed the entrance of the
word of God into their hearts, and had as yet rendered almost all
their labours fruitless. But what particularly distressed them was,
when they saw that the impressions which had been made on some of the
natives on hearing the gospel, while residing in the neighbourhood of
the mission-settlement, were wholly effaced when they removed to a
distance, and associated with their heathen countrymen.

Anxious, therefore, to retain them around their station, the brethren
proposed a method for rendering them comfortable during the winter, by
building a store-house where their provisions might be laid up, so
that the superfluities of summer should supply the wants of winter.
But the savages could not understand the use of refusing to gratify
their present appetites in order to provide for any distant
emergency--they preferred to revel in the plenty of summer, and to
rove to other places in winter in search of food, by which propensity
they were scattered above one hundred and twenty miles along the
coast. Yet, even these wanderers were the means of exciting the
attention of their kindred to the gospel, by telling them of the
strange things they had heard at Nain. It was therefore resolved to
follow the leadings of Providence, and, as soon as possible, to
establish two other missionary settlements, the one towards the north,
the other south of the present.

For this purpose, application was made to the Society of the Brethren
in London, who, entering fully into their views, obtained from the
Privy Council an order granting them liberty to search out and take
possession of land sufficient for their object. A commission was
accordingly sent for the brethren to explore the coast, and Brazen,
Lister, Lehman, and Jans Haven, offered themselves for this service.
On the 5th of August they set out for the north. "But