The weather increasing in severity, the Esquimaux, who were confined
to their huts, came to their favourite Jans Haven, saying, "Tell us
about the Saviour." Jans answered and said--"What shall I say? I know
not what to say; I am grieved because I am constrained to hear and see
that the wicked spirit yet dwells within you and robs you of your
senses. He will hold your ears that you may not hear the love the
Saviour has for you, that after death you may dwell with him in utter
darkness. Yet listen to our words and follow us to the Saviour, who
will wash you from your sins in his own blood, that you may live
eternally happy with him, after you have left a world where sorrow
and pleasure are mingled together; where we must suffer hunger, and
thirst, and cold, and wretchedness, and misery, unless we believe in
Jesus, who will preserve us, and keep us, and bring us to be for ever
with himself, where there is no pain, but fulness of joy for
evermore." Still, on the succeeding day, the weather not abating, the
party were detained at the station, which the increasing scarcity of
food rendered now doubly uncomfortable; the brethren were obliged to
be on the watch whenever they eat, lest the Esquimaux should snatch
the scanty morsel from them, which now consisted of only one meal a
day. "One can hardly conceive," say they in their journal, "what we
endured: we had no rest neither night nor day; when we lay down to
sleep and gat warm, we were almost devoured with vermin; when we sat
up during the day, we were almost suffocated with stench and smoke."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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