narrow kaiaks. The
number of printed books circulated in the congregations, and now
constantly increasing, kept alive the desire to learn to read and
understand the holy Scriptures. The schools were thronged by young and
old.

It has sometimes been asserted that the sacred writings are ill
adapted for school books; that they are above the capacity of
children, and do not possess those attractions which little stories,
extracts from entertaining writers, histories of our own and other
countries present.[J] Without entering upon any argument, it may be
sufficient to remark, that at no time did our native Scotland produce
a more intelligent, acute, and moral race, than that generation which
was educated in schools where the Bible and the Shorter Catechism were
the chief, if not the sole, medium of their instruction. At the
Moravian settlements the same effects flow from a similar mode of
tuition, and the mind that has been early exercised in searching out
the meaning of the Divine Oracles of truth, comes well prepared to
estimate the realities of life, and form a true and correct judgment
upon common topics and matters of daily occurrence: they have been
taught that the present ought to be improved with a reference to the
future, not only in spiritual but in temporal matters, and the natural
consequence is, that the converted Esquimaux and their children become
at once an intelligent and a provident race. So long as they continued
heathen their intellect in general appeared incapable of comprehending
any thing beyond the immediate and grosser cravings of nature, but
now they understood and could converse upon more rational subjects;
then no arguments could induce them, not even their own necessities,
to build store houses, but now they willingly assisted the
missionaries in erecting these buildings for public use, while in some
of the settlements they erected new ones for themselves. Along with
reading, the natives were taught writing and arithmetic, in which many
of them made no inconsiderable proficiency. Yet, notwithstanding all
their care and watchfulness, the brethren were not without their
trials from the members of their congregations, and they, commonly sum
up their accounts of the prosperous state of their people with some
such conclusion as this:--"We must after all confess that much
imperfection is yet seen, and some of those living here are not what
they ought to be. The enemy is not idle, but endeavours to si