e dust, their souls, purchased by his precious blood,
would be saved. One of the baptized replied that he knew all that, and
understood it quite well, but he must be allowed to follow his own
discretion. He promised, however, at parting, that he would continue
to love his teachers--would think on their words, and if he should die
in the south, he would order that his baptized children should be sent
back to the congregation and put under their care.

During the winters 1796 and 1797, an infectious disease visited all
the settlements, a violent cough, accompanied with fever and pleurisy;
it attacked both Europeans and Esquimaux, but proved fatal chiefly to
the latter, and lasted for about two months; at Nain it was so
universal, that when they met together they could not proceed, as the
coughing rendered the service altogether unintelligible. When an
Esquimaux is taken ill, he expects, from any medicine that may be
prescribed, an immediate cure, and if this does not take place grows
dejected; and now, fears at the thoughts of death, which are deeply
rivetted, shewed themselves even in believers. The missionaries were
assiduous in their attendance, and in using every means they possessed
for their cure; but learned, to their inexpressible grief, that the
impatience of some also who had received the gospel, led them to
follow the old superstitious ways of the sorcerers to procure relief,
and this at the very time when they were professing to follow
implicitly the prescriptions of the brethren. They were very cautious,
however, lest it should reach the missionaries' ears; nor do the
latter seem to have been aware of it, till one of the communicants at
Okkak, constrained by uneasiness of mind, confessed the whole with
many tears, saving that he had grievously sinned against the Lord. The
hypocrisy and equivocation which many, of whom they had hoped better
things, evinced, added greatly to the anguish of the missionaries; but
they had great consolation in the death of others, who departed happy
in the faith to their Saviour. Among these was Daniel, a communicant;
he said in his last illness, "All the things I had confidence in are
now in the depths of the sea, my only refuge is the Saviour; all my
thoughts rest on him." The widow Esther, however, deserves particular
notice; she was bred at Kilanok north from Okkak, and when a child
came on a visit to Nain in 1773, where she and her countrymen heard
for the first time the miss