MICMAC INDIANS. 145 



If he had taken that view of the matter 

 at the outset he would never have entered on 

 a mission to the Micmacs, and gone into an 

 ecstasy of rejoicing when he had translated 

 the first verse of scripture, as if the letter 

 was much more than the spirit. The Micmacs 

 were the first Indians north of Mexico to em- 

 brace Christianity, and their teachers were 

 missionaries of rare zeal and piety, deserving 

 of great praise for their self-denial and devotion 

 to humanity. 



In his later years, when his knowledge of 

 Micmac language was thorough, Dr. Rand must 

 have been both pained and amused over his 

 crude translations made when his zeal outran 

 his knowledge. Eliot, the famous New England 

 missionary to the Indians, relates that when he 

 was making his translation of the Bible, and 

 came to Judges v : 28, " The mother of Sisera 

 looked out at a window and cried through the 

 lattice," etc., he was unable to find a word 

 for lattice. He explained to his Indians that a 

 lattice was a bit of wood-work made of narrow 

 strips placed side by side, but not very close to- 

 gether. So they gave him a word, and he used 

 it in the translation. Long afterwards he saw 

 that the passage read thus, " The mother of 

 Sisera looked out at a window and cried 



