something of this diffidence and
sadness seems always to have weighed him down when he began to preach,
though the fervour of his subject and the responding faces of his
audience always exhilarated him and bore him up through his sermon. To
learn the Indian language had not occurred to him as part of his
preparation, but probably these Kent Red men had been enough among the
English to understand him, for they seem to have been much impressed.

A Scottish Society for propagating Christian Knowledge had arisen, and
the delegates hearing of the zeal of David Brainerd, desired to engage
him at a salary. The sense of his own unworthiness, and fear of keeping
out a better man, brought his spirits down to the lowest ebb;
nevertheless, he went to meet the representatives of the Society at New
York, and there, though between the hubbub of the town and his own
perpetual self-condemnation he was continually wretched, they were so
well satisfied with him as to give him the appointment, on condition that
he studied the language, intending to send him to the Red men between the
Susquehanna and the Delaware; but there was a dispute between these and
the Government, and it was decided to send him to a settlement called
Kanaumeek, between Stockbridge and Albany.

Before going, David Brainerd, having no thought beyond devotion to the
Indians, and thinking his allowance enough for his wants, gave up the
whole of his inheritance to support a scholar at the University, and set
forth, undaunted by such weakness of health as in ordinary eyes would
have fitted him for nothing but to be carefully nursed; for even then he
was continually suffering from pain and dizziness, and weakness so great
that he could often hardly stand.

In this state he arrived at Kanaumeek, with a young Indian to act as his
interpreter, and there spent the first night sleeping on a heap of straw.
It was a lonely, melancholy spot, where the Indians were herded together,
watched with jealous eyes by adventurers who were always endeavouring to
seize their lands, and sadly degenerated from the free, grave,
high-spirited men to whom Eliot had preached. His first lodging was in
the log house of a poor Scotchman who lived among the Indians--a single
chamber, without so much as a floor, and where he shared the family meals
upon porridge, boiled corn, and girdle-cakes. The family spoke Gaelic,
only the master of the house knowing any English, and that not so good as
the In