the fences of the mission gardens and help themselves.

We enter the irregular enclosure, where lie the bodies of many, who
have fallen asleep during the hundred years that Hopedale has stood.
Here are some Eskimo graves with little headstones, bearing brief
inscriptions, but more mounds without identification. In one corner
lies a group of graves of touching interest--the missionaries and
their children--who have taken sepulchre possession here.

Thence our way lies along the shore. What is that noise? It is a whale
blowing in the smooth water. Look, yonder rises the column of spray,
and now a great fin appears for a moment over the surface. Wait
awhile, and the monster will blow again. Yes, there he is, spouting
and diving; on the whole, we can hear more than we can see of him.

Over rock and moss, variegated with lovely little flowers, we reach
the path which skirts the old heathen sites. Little more than the
outline of the former turf houses is visible. The turf roof has fallen
in, or been carried away, but the low mounds which formed the walls
remain, as also the roofless curving porch, which in each opened out
to the sea. More than one hundred persons of both sexes and all ages
are said to have inhabited these three houses, and their heathen life
here, with its cruelties, sorceries, and other unhallowed phases, can
better be imagined than described. It must have been a great advance
for them in every respect when they moved to the mission-station,
established nearly half a mile away, and began to learn the faith and
hope which have given it its name. In those days there must have been
a good many such heathen villages along this coast with a nomad
population far more numerous than now.