132 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



mar and syntax in his simple way, so that he appeared not to 

 render it into English as he read, but to think in the language. 

 His joy in acquiring the pronunciation was affecting; it was the 

 crown of his life. 



My note-book of this dredging expedition was burnt years 

 ago; thus I have lost the name of this dear fellow whose friend- 

 ship I acquired through the Greek alphabet, but I remember 

 his story as he told it me. He had been to sea until he was too 

 old for that labor. He was entirely self-taught, but he had an 

 apt pupil in himself, for he had much sound learning, including 

 rather difficult mathematics. He had devised and made an in- 

 teresting lot of instruments for nautical observations, novel 

 forms of sextants and queer contrivances for observing and 

 computing, and, what was more remarkable, tools for graduat- 

 ing the various circles he needed in his constructions. He was 

 a religious enthusiast and for all his active life had longed for 

 a chance to study Greek in order to read the Christian part of 

 the Scriptures in the original ; he was skeptic enough to distrust 

 the translations. So when, at about seventy-five, he had leisure, 

 he possessed himself of the text of the New Testament in the 

 original, and without grammar or dictionary set to work by a 

 process of comparison with the English version to learn the 

 language it was amazing to see how well. As we sailed away, 

 I saw the old man in the place where I found him, and heard him 

 fairly shouting his Greek in the letters and sounds he had 

 learned. 



Our voyage along the coast was replete with incidents of con- 

 tact with the then remote and primitive people who dwelt there. 

 It was the richer for Stimpson's rough art in dealing with their 

 curiosity as to our purpose, which must have seemed strange 

 enough to folk who thought they knew all manner of dealings 

 with the sea. Between Grand Manan and Eastport, while we 

 were pulling in a rough sea as for dear life towards the shore, 

 a fisherman sailing in one of the sharp-sterned, high-pooped 

 schooners of the time, found his curiosity too much for him. 



