Fort Renville, as it was sometimes called, was a stockade, made for defence in case of an invasion by the Ojibwas, who had been from time immemorial at war with the Sioux. Inside of this stockade stood Mr. Renville's hewed-log house, consisting of a store-house and two dwellings. Mr. Renville's reception-room was of good size, with a large open fireplace, in which his Frenchmen, or "French-boys," as they were called by the Indians, piled up an enormous quantity of wood of a cold day, setting it up on end, and thus making a fire to be felt as well as seen. Here the chief Indian men of the village gathered to smoke and talk. A bench ran almost around the entire room, on which they sat or reclined. Mr. Renville usually sat on a chair in the middle of the room. He was a small man with rather a long face and head developed upward. A favorite position of his was to sit with his feet crossed under him like a tailor. This room was the place of Bible translating. Dr. Williamson and Mr. G. H. Pond had both learned to read French. The former usually talked with Mr. Renville in French, and, in the work of translating, read from the French Bible, verse by verse. Mr. Renville's memory had been specially cultivated by having been much employed as interpreter between the Dakotas and the French. It seldom happened that he needed to have the verse re-read to him. But it often happened that we, who wrote the Dakota from his lips, needed to have it repeated in order that we should get it exactly and fully. When the verse or sentence was finished, the Dakota was read by one of the company. We were all only beginners in writing the Dakota language, and I more than the others. Sometimes Mr. Renville showed, by the twinkle of his eye, his conscious superiority to us, when he repeated a long and difficult sentence and found that we had forgotten the beginning. But ordinarily he was patient with us, and ready to repeat. By this process, continued from week to week during that first winter of ours at Lac-qui-parle, a pretty good translation of the Gospel of Mark was completed, besides some fugitive chapters from other parts. In the two following winters the Gospel of John was translated in the same way. Besides giving these portions of the Word of God to the Dakotas sooner than it could have been done by the missionaries alone, these translations were invaluable to us as a means of studying the structure of the language, and as determining, in advance of our own efforts in this line, the forms or moulds of many new ideas which the Word contains. In after years we always felt safe in referring to Mr. Renville as authority in regard to the form of a Dakota expression. * * * * *