"We want to be stirred up there; there is plenty of material there, we need only to be stirred up," was the appeal which Dr. Duff could not resist. He knew that in two mighty countries of the West, the United States and Canada, embers, as it were, of Christian love were smouldering that might be stirred up into a glorious blaze to illumine half the world. Duff's own heart was glowing with zeal, he must go, by God's grace, to infuse his own warmth into others. The Missionary embarked on the twenty-eighth January, 1854, for the United States of America. Again was Dr. Duff to meet with tempest and tribulation, though not this time with shipwreck. Such a gale came that, in the Missionary's own words,— "It looked at one time as if the vessel could not possibly survive it . . . On Thursday morning the spectacle presented by the vessel was most extraordinary. Though it still blew hard, the sky cleared with intense frosty air, exhibiting the ship as if one huge mass of ice. The deck was covered with it, several inches thick, the ropes, spars, and rigging; the masts up to their sails, all well encrusted in ice from two to six inches thick." [Illustration: NEW YORK, UNITED STATES.] It was doubtless a wondrous and beautiful sight that of a large ship turned, as it seemed, into ice. But not only must the great cold have destroyed anything like comfort, but the weight of the quantities of ice sank the ship nine inches deeper in the water. Of course the hard crust had to be knocked away, all hands were set to work to break off the glittering masses; and we may hope that the violent exercise served to warm the chilled crew of the ice-mantled ship. When the vessel had almost reached the harbour, Dr. Duff thus wrote to his wife.