Is it fair for us to infer that the Christians of the Maritime Provinces are content to let the Micmacs grope on in their gloom, ignorantly lifting their hearts in adoration to an unknown God! Can we be so base as to join the rabble “With a purse to pay for the show,”—we who have been given the true Mythology and commanded to carry the news to every creature? Though Silas T. Rand was a man with the usual desires for visible results in his missionary work, he restrained these desires, and laboured to supplement rather than to supplant the work which had been so faithfully done by the Roman Catholic missionaries. He labored to present the Gospel message in its fullness as related to the unobserved duties of everyday life; and to instil into the minds of the Micmac Christians a clearer understanding of that perfect love which casts out fear. He did not work for a reward; he found his reward in his work, and any one may find it too by speaking of good Mr. Land (Rand) when in conversation with those for whom he gave his life. It will be fifty years on the twelfth of this present month of November since Dr. Rand began the work which has incidentally given us this glimpse of the rich Mythology of the Micmacs. Shall we not on this jubilee occasion revive in some way the work so faithfully carried on, and all unite to realize the fullness of the Gospel message ourselves, as we attempt to give it in its fullness to every man for whom our Father meant it? [Illustration] ----- [2] The substance of this chapter was delivered as a graduating essay before the Faculty of Acadia University last June, and it appeared in its present form in the October and November numbers of the Prince Edward Island Magazine.—J. S. C. [3] _Megamaage_ or _Megumagee_, Micmac name for Maritime Provinces. THE DYING INDIAN’S DREAM. A POEM. BY SILAS TERTIUS RAND, Of Hantsport, Nova Scotia, MISSIONARY TO THE MICMAC INDIANS. THIRD EDITION, REVISED. WITH SOME ADDITIONAL LATIN POEMS. WINDSOR, N. S.: C. W. KNOWLES, 1881. PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. The Wigwam Scene described in the following pages, occurred at Hantsport, Nova Scotia, in March, 1855. In the Sixth Annual Report of the Micmac Mission, in a letter written immediately after the event, I find it thus inscribed: