80 ON THE GREAT CHURCHILL RIVER 



in physique, in reserve, and the quiet grace of 

 race which indubitably marks, and marked, the 

 full-blooded Indian. 



Of our two great religions the Catholic faith 

 appears to be the stronger pioneer on the out- 

 skirts of civilisation in North-west Canada, and 

 beyond, for at a great many surprisingly remote 

 stations of the Hudson Bay Company it has 

 established missions where priests work faithfully 

 alone among the few somewhat pagan inhabitants 

 that constitute | their (charge. Therefore one 

 comes to take Catholic missions as a matter of 

 course on the north trails, but here, at Stanley, 

 was a less common institution a long-established 

 Protestant mission which at the time of its begin- 

 ning must have been a great pioneering venture 

 on the part of the mission, and missionary, 

 which undertook it, and even now could give 

 to a man exiled from his kind, and the customs 

 of his kind, but little comfort and reward except- 

 ing a measure of satisfaction to earnest con- 

 science and devout determination. The highest- 

 up habitation on the hillside on the north-west 

 shore is the mission house, while the church, 

 dominant and outstanding in this place of tiny 

 dwellings, is erected on the east margin of the 

 settlement, near to the shore. Inhabitants of 

 Stanley say the church was built sixty-five years 

 ago, and as it is the most pretentious erection 

 north of the Churchill, and has been so for many 

 years, I will endeavour to describe it. The archi- 

 tecture, if it could be so called, was crude, almost 

 barn-like ; such as could be described was Gothic 

 in design. The church was constructed with 



