68 REVIEWS ^THE GREAT DESERTS OF NORTH AMERICA. 



ment of romance is not without its influence on others besides the 

 colonist. "With how different an eye do the annual May gatherings 

 at Exeter Hall and elsewhere, look on a Missionary from some far 

 away South Sea Island or African Kraal, and on a " City Missionary" 

 from the deserts of St. Giles' or Whitechapel ! It is hard to beUeve 

 that the word Missionary can be the same in both cases. This 

 may perhaps help to open the eies of some English philanthro- 

 pists, to causes which render their self-denying exertions nearly 

 fruitless. The Church of England annually spends, on the Missions 

 in Rupert's Land alone, between ^66,000 and ^7,000 ^ and in a recent 

 report it is shewn, that besides what is contributed by the Society for 

 the propagation of the Gospel, the Church Missionary Society has 

 expended about ^50,000 upon Missionary operations in the Hudson's 

 Bay Territories, in addition to funds contributed by the great Fur 

 Company for the ministrations of religion. The present Bishop of 

 Rupert's Land is a devoted and indefatigable missionary ; but the 

 fruits of all this cost and labour, so far as the natives are concerned, 

 seem to be wonderfully small. Perhaps some part of the cause of 

 this is revealed in the pertinent question which occurs in the " Red 

 River Explorations' Report," printed by order of the Canadian 

 Parliament in 1858 : — " Can the ministrations of the Church in the 

 English tongue, to orderly resident congregations of European Cana- 

 dians, or half-breed origin, be Missionary-labour, in the sense in which 

 that highest of all duties is understood by those who seek to spread the 

 truths of Christianity among a most degraded and barbarous heathen 

 race ? " "On two Sundays during my stay," says Professor Hind, in 

 the same report, " at the time when Divine Service was being celebrated 

 in all the churches of the settlement the heathen Indians held their 

 dog feasts and medicine dances on the open plain. In one instance, 

 five dogs were slaughtered, cooked, and devoured ; in another instance, 

 three ; — the evil spirit was invoked, the conjuror's arts used to inspire 

 his savage spectators with awe, and all the revolting ceremonies 

 belonging to the most degraded haathen superstition practised, within 

 a mile and-a-half of the spot where the stones are now gathered for 

 the Bishop of Rupert's Land's Cathedral." 



"We are reluctant to believe that the fate which has hitherto befallen 

 the Red Indian is the inevitable doom of the thousands that still sur- 

 vive. Civilization has elevated tribes as savage, and seemingly even 

 more degraded ; and Christianity has achieved triumphs not less 



