PLOUGHING AND SOWING 239 



Beyond the joy of receiving letters from home, 

 the missionaries had the pleasure of unpacking their 

 annual supplies. Among them were a large number 

 of towels and a quantity of soap. Alluding to 

 these, Mr. Peck remarks : " Won't our Eskimos be 

 clean by and by." And in a private letter he 

 writes : " I am trying to teach the children to be 

 clean. At first they came to me with hair a literal 

 mat of filth and grease, so that it was difficult to 

 tell which was hair and which was dirty grease. 

 Their skins were thickly coated with cakes of dirt. 

 With the towels and soap now sent us, and which I 

 have served out to the children, we are giving an 

 incentive to cleanliness by offering thirteen prizes, 

 at the next Christmas festival, for the uniformly 

 cleanest children." 



Towards the end of September the Alert left again 

 for Scotland and winter once more began to encircle 

 Blacklead Island. A time of spiritual warfare 

 followed, concerning which some interesting details 

 are given. Perhaps it may have struck some 

 readers that, as far as teaching by the missionaries 

 and the reception of their teaching by the Eskimos 

 were concerned, there had, up to this time, been a 

 remarkable absence of conflict. Well, we must 

 expect that this state of things cannot go on for 

 ever. Even in earthly things innovations, however 

 good, inevitably stir up opposition. How much 

 more must the messenger of Christ expect to 



