the starving natives were supplied both with food and riches, the
skins of these animals forming a principal article of exchange with
the Europeans. But this last occurrence proved that wealth among
savages, as well as in more civilized countries, is not always a
blessing; it renewed anew the desire to go to the south, as the
greater part were now in circumstances to carry merchandize thither,
to barter with the good and kind Europeans. Nothing then was spoken of
but trade in the south, and they could hardly wait for the season to
undertake the journey. When the brethren visited them in the spring,
they treated them with the greatest indifference and even insolence;
the gospel of Jesus found no access to them; and though, through a
certain dread of the missionaries, which they could not cast off, they
were not so outrageously brutal as formerly; yet in secret they
returned to the indulgence of many of their vile practices.

Early in the approaching summer, more than eighty Esquimaux went from
the country round Nain to the south, among whom were nineteen of the
baptized, and even Peter, the first fruits of the mission, accompanied
them. The majority had determined to spend the winter there, and get
plenty to eat, and tobacco, and guns, and powder, and ball, and other
articles which they could not purchase so advantageously from the
brethren. From the country round Okkak too, above an hundred of the
natives went south in four boats, among whom were Luke and his family,
who were baptized.

When the brethren saw that the baptized would not be prevented from
going to the south, though sorely grieved, yet anxious for their
welfare in their ill advised expedition, they gave them a written
certificate, stating that they, the missionaries, had been sent there
by an agreement with the governor of Newfoundland, in the years 1771