INTRODUCTION 33 
the Eskimos. It ended in failure. The four mission- 
aries had erected a house, the frame and materials of which 
they had brought with them, when five or six members of 
the crew, among them the mate, who was a Brother, were 
treacherously murdered by the Eskimos. The mission- 
aries were obliged to return with the ship, in order to 
help man her, and they left their house standing on the 
bleak and desolate coast. It was seen next year (1753) 
by Captain Swaine, of Philadelphia, who was exploring the 
coast in the ship Argo. 
The attempt to found a mission was not renewed until 
1764. In that year Jans Haven, a member of the 
Brotherhood who had been working among the Eskimos 
of Greenland, landed at St. John’s, Newfoundland. Sir 
Hugh Palliser, the new governor, was anxious to improve 
the relations between the white men and the Eskimos, 
and he did all in his power to further Haven’s aims. At 
last, at Quirpont, Haven met an Eskimo. “I ran to 
meet him,” he says. Great was the surprise of the Eskimo 
at being addressed in Greenlandic. 
The next year three other missionaries came out, one 
of them an old man whose race was nearly run. They 
selected the spot which they thought best for their mission, 
and then asked from the government a grant of 100,000 
acres in connection with it. This demand fell on the ears 
of the government like a thunderbolt. It was excessive; 
it savoured even of ulterior designs. The missionaries 
explained that the vicious influence of the European 
traders and fishermen on the coast made it necessary that 
the natives should, as far as possible, be preserved from 
contamination. In 1769, after long delays, the grant was 
D 
