understand, have suited the genius of the language, and its
significance. "Neat little Ramah" certainly expresses the character of
the lonely missionary settlement.

The village, if one may dignify this small group of human dwellings by
that name, stands on a little plain evidently won by degrees from the
sea for the successive beaches can be traced. The mission premises,
the old house, the new house, and the church with its little belfry,
are one continuous building facing the bay southward, and exactly one
hundred feet in length. Behind are the store buildings, and the low
turf huts of the natives stretch westward along the strand. They are
so like grassy mounds, that from any distance one would ask, "But
where do the Eskimoes live?"

The missionary dwelling is primitive enough, even as enlarged. During
our brief stay here, I have the honour of occupying the original
house, built about twenty years ago. It is but a room divided by a
curtain, but it served the first missionary couple here as
dwelling-room, bedroom, church, and everything else. What a grand view
there is from the window over the deep land-locked bay, in which the
"Harmony" is lying at the only available anchorage. No one would guess
that it would take more than half-an-hour to row across the smooth
water, or in winter to walk over its frozen surface to the opposite
shore, where, as on this side, precipitous bluffs rise almost from the
water's edge. All nature around is on a grand scale, and those
snow-clad mountains, which look over the shoulders of the nearer
cliffs, are quite Alpine in effect. Climb to the dizzy heights, which
tower threateningly six or seven hundred feet above the station and
you find you are not half way to the summit of the nearest hill. It
must, indeed, be a magnificent view from thence towards the great