GATHERING FRUIT 143 



journals tell us, " whom I had the pleasure of keeping 

 in my little house and instructing in the Word of 

 God. His parents were both very respectable and 

 intelligent. His mother died during the early years 

 of my sojourn in Little Whale River. 



" His father married again, and Joseph, with his 

 father, step-mother, and brothers, left the station. 



" Their after experiences were terrible. Wandering 

 over the frozen sea, never meeting with any who 

 could help them, and finding no game of any kind, 

 hunger pressed them hard. 



" Weak and faint and despairing, delirious 

 doubtless with starvation, the poor mother at last 

 sank down by the side of a rock, and taking her 

 infant child from the hood (in which Eskimo 

 women always carry their babes) she strangled it, 

 and then laid herself down to die. 



" The father, with the three remaining children, 

 when all was over, pressed on. Thinking, in their 

 desperate state, that by crossing over a bight in 

 the coast they might meet with some of their 

 fellow-countrymen, they ventured out upon what 

 proved to be unsafe ice. 



" One by one they broke through the icy sheet 

 and perished. Joseph alone remained. 



" Retracing his steps with a dogged persever 

 ance, he travelled on by the longer route. He fell 

 in at last with a wandering band of Eskimos, but 

 only just in time, for he was ill and spent. 



