304 THE LIFE OF E. J. PECK 



found especial cause for thankfulness. The future 

 of a people depends on the uprising generation. 

 And the work among the children seemed to show 

 solid progress. The average attendance at school 

 we find, soon after Mr. Peck's arrival, was from 

 sixty-five to seventy children daily. This strikes 

 us as being a very high number, especially as we are 

 also told that about the same time the mission- 

 aries took the census of the people and found there 

 were just forty dwellings inhabited by Eskimos 

 in and around the island, and in these 194 people 

 lived. So the numbers attending school amounted 

 to one-third of the entire population. 



And the knowledge that was acquired was con- 

 siderable. On December 19 Mr. Peck writes : 

 " I commenced the examination of our elder scholars. 

 The subject was the Ten Commandments with a 

 brief summary of each commandment. The 

 scholars were not asked to say them (straight off) 

 by rote, but each was expected to be able to repeat 

 the commandment corresponding to the number 

 2, 5, 9, etc. This was no small tax on the memory, 

 but I am happy to say that out of a class of eighteen, 

 eleven passed through the ordeal without making 

 a single mistake." 



" The next day the examination was continued. 

 The second class was then taken. Many of these 

 repeated from memory twenty-two Scripture texts 

 without making any mistake." 



