Winter set in severely on the Labrador coast, but this proved an advantage to the missions, as those at Nain were enabled to forward supplies by sledges to their brethren at Hopedale, who, although curtailed of some of their comforts, acknowledged with cheerful thankfulness that they had suffered no essential deprivation. The Esquimaux were also deprived of their usual supply of food by the early winter, which prevented them from taking many seals, either by the net or in kaiaks; but, as not unfrequently happened in their times of extremity, they were successful in killing a whale, which preserved from suffering much from famine, and for which they joined their teachers in returning thanks to their heavenly Father. Their number was reduced by the death of a venerable brother, Sueb Andersen, who had served the mission forty years, as well as Christensan, who had been carried to England; but nevertheless, besides their usual daily labour, they were able to erect for their own use a building containing rooms for holding provisions and fuel, and a bakehouse. Easily contented, however, as they were with their stinted fare, and pleasantly as they could undergo both privation and manual labour; they could not see, without the most poignant sorrow, those who had begun to run well, hindered in their progress, and the greatest affliction they felt, and the only one which extorted from them a complaint in this trying season, was the seduction of several of their congregation. Four traders from the south, with an Esquimaux family in company, spent that winter in their neighbourhood. They sent European provisions to the native inhabitants, and invited them to come and traffic, which proved a great snare, and disturbed the peaceful course of the congregation; for many of the baptized had lived formerly in the south, and contracted a taste for European indulgences, particularly for strong liquors, from which they had been weaned since their settling at Hopedale; but these propensities revived when temptation was presented. The brethren spared no pains, by friendly exhortations and affectionate remonstrances, to avert the calamity, yet they had the grief to see three families of eighteen persons desert the station; among whom were six communicants and several hopeful young people. The women and children wept bitterly at parting, and even the men seemed affected, but the latter, led captive by the wiles of the seducer, forced their families to follow. "We cannot describe," say the missionaries, "the pain we felt in seeing these poor deluded people running headlong into danger, and we cried to our Saviour to keep his hand over them in mercy, and not to suffer them to become a prey to the enemy of their souls."