"He giveth to the beast his food, and to the young ravens which cry."
Perhaps it was only carrying out His great purposes, when we thus left
all this food for some of His creatures to whom, "He giveth their meat
in due season."
Wild ducks, geese, and other aquatic birds were occasionally shot,
affording us most savoury food as did also the beavers wild-cats, and
muskrats.
Our nights were spent where the day's journey ended. Missionaries in
nearly all lands can generally find some human, habitation in which to
obtain or prepare their food and spend the night. As a child, I used to
listen with intense interest to my beloved father, who for many years
had been a pioneer missionary in what were then known as the wilds of
Upper Canada--tell of his adventures. Many had been his hardships and
dangers, but I remember he used to say, that he could generally find the
comfortable log-cabin of a friendly settler in which to pass the night.
The trail in the wild north land leads through regions of country
thousands of miles in extent, where there is not even to be found a
leather tepee or a birch-bark wigwam, much less a house. The result
was, when making such journeys, we had to do the next best thing, and
that was to camp at the spot where night overtook us. Of course we were
on the lookout for as comfortable a place as it was possible to find. A
smooth dry granite rock for our bed, and dry wood with which to make our
fires, where we cooked our food and dried our clothes, were always
considered the essential requisites for a comfortable camp. Warm days
alternated with damp and chilly ones, but the nights were generally
cold. The bright warm camp-fire was always welcomed with great delight
after a day's journey of sixty miles on the trail. Pleasant indeed are
the memories of happy restful hours so spent, when the good honest day's
work was done, and the time of rest well earned. After the hearty
evening meal and prayers, it was each a luxury to be able to stretch our
cramped limbs before a glorious camp-fire on the rocky shore of some
great river or picturesque lake. Then the attempt to read even some
favourite author was not always a great success. It seemed more
congenial just to lie there, and muse and watch the dying of the day as
the brightness gradually faded out of the western sky, and the stars in
their modest way, one by one, came out into conscious vision, until the
whole heavens were lit up by their radiance. The only sounds were the
roar of the distant cataract, the music of the running stream, the
rippling of the waves at our feet, broken some nights by the occasional
cry of a wild bird or beast, from among the trees of the encircling
forest. The quiet, picturesquely garbed men in their statuesque
attitudes added much to the attractiveness of the surroundings.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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