THE MISSIONS 231 
doctor. It was a new experience to see an Eskimo trying 
to accommodate himself toa bed. The warmth of the ward 
was objectionable. The additional heat of bedclothes was 
intolerable. Washed to a fine nut-brown, with their jet- 
black hair and large, dark eyes, they formed a most pleas- 
ing contrast to the white sheets on which they lay when 
we paid our first morning visit. Covering of any kind they 
had long disposed of, and even then they were perspiring 
and panting. Nature seems to have taught them what 
civilization has made us forget, — the value of fresh air. - 
Ina terribly fatal epidemic of typhoid fever in 1896, I had 
tried to persuade some of my patients to remain in their 
tents when very feverish. In one case I had endeavoured 
to enforce my ruling by removing the patient’s garments. 
Such a trifling “impediment” had not daunted him. Why 
stay under cover when you are hot? Next morning when 
I returned, I found him stark-naked, huddled up in the 
cold, waiting for the doctor and the ravished clothes. He 
eventually recovered, in spite of me. 
Nain, the fifth station, is ninety miles farther south, and 
accessible by mail steamer. It is a perfect harbour, en- 
tirely shut in from the sea by countless islands, great and 
small. Its beautiful bay runs inland over forty miles, 
and one can travel by steamer for a hundred miles south 
without once going into the open ocean. Nain is at once 
the head station of the Brethren, the seat of the Bishop, 
who is also a German consul, and is of the oldest standing. 
The well-tended vegetable patches, the tidy paths through 
the woods so long preserved, and now so lonely looking 
against the otherwise absolutely naked ground, the prim 
flower-gardens, and the orthodox tea-houses (with more 
