W

HILE "not unmindful of the loyal and cheerful way in which many burdens are carried by practically every one of the congregations," Bishop Williams, of Nebraska, at the last diocesan convention, expressed his great disappointment that more was not being done in some of the larger parishes toward the giving of the apportionment. "All honor," said the bishop, "to St. Barnabas's, Omaha; Christ Church, Beatrice; St. Mary's, Blair; St. Martin's, South Omaha; Emmanuel, Fairbury, and the Ascension, Auburn, for meeting with unfailing regularity the full amount of their missionary obligations to the Church at large. Who shall say that these congregations are better able to give than the rest? It is not that the people are not able to give; the fault lies back of this. It is because of the failure of the clergy in most instances to tell their people of the needs of the Church and of the duty and blessedness of helping to extend the Kingdom."

Turning to the practical question of methods to be followed in leading a congregation to larger missionary giving, the bishop said: "I would urge the clergy to make use of the following suggestions in regard to raising the full amount expected of each parish and mission:

"1. Preach a manly Gospel so earnestly that your parishioners will want others to have what they are getting.

"2. Make clear from every point of view, secular and religious, the fact of universal brotherhood.

"3. Give the people, young and old, definite instructions about missions, about schools and hospitals, as well as about churches.

"4. Make the people understand that the missionaries are their representa

tives, and that the missions are their property and their enterprise. Make it clear that the missionaries are doing the work the people have asked them to do, and that they and the missions should get the support the people have promised them.

"5. Recommend definite means for securing the full apportionment.

"(a) Set apart one Sunday morning, or more, of each year for missions. Give notice of the service and the offering at least one week beforehand by means either of the circular letter published by the Board of Missions for the purpose, or, better, by a letter written in your own words. Enclose in each circular letter an envelope, returnable on the Sunday named or as soon after as possible. Reach those who do not come to church as well as those who do.

"(b) Include the amount of the parochial apportionment in the current. expense budget. At the end of each month forward to the Treasurer of the Board of Missions one-twelfth of that sum. Pay this debt with as much conscience as you would pay bills for parochial support.

"(c) Extend the apportionment plan to parishioners. Apportion a proper amount to each individual within the parish according to his pledge for general parochial support."

I

SUPPOSE the charge of a native mission, with its village of 125 souls, and of the white people's chapel at the town three miles away, would generally be considered a sufficient handful for one man, and if not, the spiritual care of a two-company army post without a chaplain might be reckoned as making up a full tale. But duties that have been piled upon Mr. Hoare since the departure of the Prevosts made it necessary for the bishop to take him from his own charge at Eagle and put him at Tanana.

It fell out that despite all my plans to spend Christmas at Fort Yukon or at the least at Fort Hamlin, I lay at Tanana during the festival season. A few days after my reaching that place, "Stephen Minister" died suddenly. He was the oldest native catechist in length of service on the river, and was much thought of and respected. The news of the death spread rapidly, and there was much disturbance amongst the natives and great preparation to attend the funeral from up and down the Yukon and from the Tanana, so that it was necessary to postpone the burial until the day

before Christmas, that all who wished might come. And, from my desire to show the respect of the Church to a faithful native servant, I yielded to Mr. Hoare's wish that I should stay, and thus, for two weeks altogether, I was his guest and the interested observer of his manifold activities.

It was due to a most perverse chapter of accidents and coincidences that the school teacher intended for this post slipped by and caught the last boat up the Koyukuk and got to Bettles, 800 miles away, too late to return (and a year ahead of time) before any one knew that she was even started for Alaskaall for lack of a fifty-cent telegram. I should like to tell about it because it illustrates vividly the difficulties under which we labor, and because it has an amusing side that became irresistible when the Department of Education received her first letters in January and telegraphed instructions that a party with reindeer and sleds be despatched to effect her wholly unnecessary rescue. But the only point in it for my present narrative is that Tanana was left without a teacher. What should Mr. Hoare do

terior transferred a reindeer herd to our mission at Tanana, intending it to be the first of a series of herds at the missions along the Yukon. Despite all attacks upon the management of the reindeer in Alaska, no one who has studied the subject and visited the stations can doubt that the enterprise is big with good for the Alaskan natives-and the white man as well. There are great difficulties to be overcome, and there is room for doubt whether the natives of the in

way, and has much keeping of accounts and issuing of rations, and occasional visiting of the herd, twenty-five miles away, where the moss is plentiful and dogs are not. As a draught animal I have personal reasons for thinking the reindeer a wild and clumsy fraud, but, barring moose and mountain sheep, his flesh is the best meat to be had in Alaska, and so far ahead of "cold storage" beef and mutton that no wonder there is a preserved meat lobby in Washington

against the reindeer industry. In Fairbanks last winter good cuts of cold storage meat cost seventy-five to eighty cents a pound. On the Seward peninsula I found the price to be thirty to forty cents a pound. And the difference was due chiefly to the fact that from the four or five reindeer herds on the Seward peninsula meat could be had at thirty-five cents a pound, while in Fairbanks there was no such competition. No wonder the reindeer industry has enemies.

The gravest and most anxious of Mr. Hoare's duties I have not yet mentioned. Two churches-and the task of learning a new native language thrown inschool, reindeer herd, sawmill-all these I am sure he would say weigh lightly upon him compared to the legal and police functions he is compelled to assume. And here we touch the skeleton in the closet of every native mission on the river. For the chief worry and trouble, the chief drawback and hindrance, the cause of sleepless nights and depression of spirits to the Alaska missionary, is the illicit whiskey trade which white men of the baser sort ply with the natives. Eternal vigilance is the price of even partial immunity from this evil, and it is impossible to shut one's eyes to the fact that it is a growing one; that little by little it is sapping the savage virtues of the native and undermining his character. The sentiment of the town-of all these river towns-is largely adverse to the execution of the law, and it is difficult to secure a jury that will convict, if there be any plausible loophole of escape and sometimes even when there is none. A large part of the population of all these towns along the Yukon is directly or indirectly interested in the sale of liquor. The bona fide miner, it must be remembered, does not reside in the towns. To begin with, the two great commercial companies of Alaska are wholesale dealers in liquor. It is not generally understood how a great proportion of their trade is trade in liquor. I am credibly informed that no less than two-thirds of the money

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value of all the merchandise they bring into the country is represented by liquor. It comes by the steamboat load. And while it is not charged that the agents of the companies sell liquor to Indians, it is abundantly clear that most of them are not at all concerned as to the ultimate destination of their sales. Company agents vary, like the rest of mankind, and some of them are honestly opposed to letting liquor get amongst the natives, but, after all, it is their business to get rid of their stock. Every one of these river towns has its half dozen saloons or so, in addition to the companies' stores, and each saloon has its gang of hangers-on, its gamblers and gamblers' "boosters"; and there are the men who own the buildings and the men who have gone on the license bonds, and so forth. And the whole liquor interest usually stands solidly together when any attempt is made to enforce the law against the sale of liquor to natives.

Now, we have no police in Alaska, only deputy U. S. marshals; and they tell us that they are not police and certainly not detectives, but merely processservers. "Swear out your complaint," they say, "and we will make the arrest." So it follows that the missionary is the only man in Alaska who stands between the natives and their systematic degradation by liquor; the only man who is really and heartily opposing the prohibited trade which flourishes all along the river in spite of the prohibition, save here and there a conscientious but unpaid "commissioner," who is in the hands of his juries. Perhaps it is necessary to say one other word. The white man who sneaks amongst the natives with liquor makes an enormous profit on his sales, but he usually has one of two other purposes when he does not have both; either the gaming and cheating of the befuddled Indian out of his furs, or the debauching of his women. Mr. Hoare had succeeded in sending one liquor peddler to gaol for six months, and had failed in the attempt to convict another, when I reached Tanana. Let

me

give two incidents to illustrate other troubles that the liquor traffic brings to the missionary:

I had just finished cooking the Christmas dinner. Mr. Hoare has two native boys who are supposed to assist him in housekeeping, in the absence of his wife "outside," and their efforts are chiefly confined to smashing the crockery and spilling things on the floor. He is gradually learning the law, well known to those who have lovingly struggled with youth, that it always takes two boys twice as long to do anything as one boy -except smashing crockery and spilling things on the floor. After service and celebration of the Holy Communion at the white chapel downtown-a threemile walk there and a three-mile walk back-we had the Christmas service for the natives. Then followed a baptism and a marriage for some who had come from afar and were not to be put off. Two celebrations, two sermons, a baptism, a marriage and the cooking of the Christmas dinner made, between us, quite a full day.

But as we were about to sit down to the first and last meal of the day came a young woman hastily to say she had stumbled across an Indian lying drunk on the trail. It was not very cold, only about ten below zero, and as we had just passed through two weeks of forty and fifty below, we considered it warm, but it was too cold to allow a drunken man to lie out. So Mr. Hoare hitched the dogs to the sled and took one of his boys with him and went to fetch the inebriate, while the reindeer steak frizzled and dried up and the rest of the dinner slowly spoiled itself. It was an hour later when he returned, tired and indignant, having taken the Indian to his cabin and put him to bed.

The rest of that Christmas season was an anxious time, for Mr. Hoare knew that there was liquor in the village and was constantly apprehensive of trouble. The next night, with the willing and generous assistance of Mr. and Mrs. Rodman, we had the Christmas tree for the natives, and a very jolly Christmas tree it was, with an Indian Santa Claus,