The diary was hastily written—often with a poor pen and poorer ink, besides other inconveniences, as he moved from place to place, carrying on the work of the Mission, but the difficulties one meets in reading the volumes are banished by the pleasure of learning, as fully as may be, the details and the leading events in that remarkable work. But there are difficulties which are not at all due to the condition of the manuscript; and the student, if he be in any way ambitious to test his powers as a linguist, is here presented with perhaps the best opportunity that man ever had,—for here are whole volumes written in Latin and French, with pages of Micmac and Maliseet, and Greek, interspersed amongst the more solid matter; while Hebrew words occur occasionally, and prove very “shibboleths” to one who has become assured that the Maritime Provinces, like _Omnia Gallia_, are still divided into three parts. There are, perhaps a thousand pages written in Pitman’s method of shorthand, and Dr. Rand also used and published in a phonetic method which necessitated the mastery of another alphabet of which the translator may have no further use after the present undertaking is completed. Writing in his Diary on March 16th, 1884, he tells how he had been for two weeks reading a copy of the Scriptures in Eskimo, kindly loaned by Dr. Sawyer, of Acadia; and that portion of his Diary written while on his tour through what was then called “Western Canada,” abounds with Indian words used by the different tribes in that section. There are complete lists of the first decade of numerals in the languages of the Mohawks, Onedias, Senecas, Ceyugas, Onondagas, and Tuscaroros, and such words as “bread,” “milk,” etc., are traced through all the different dialects. Nor was Dr. Rand satisfied with gathering what he could from the languages used in the schools and forests of Canada; he became more or less familiar with German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese; and, to cap the climax, the page of the Diary which relates a conversation with a returned Burman Missionary is adorned with a number of Burmese words.