We are told that Bishop Bompas’s father was Dicken’s prototype for Sergeant Buzfuz.  A new vista would open up to the counsel for Mrs. Bardell could he turn from his chops and tomato-sauce to follow the forty-years’ wandering in the wilderness of this splendid man of God, who succeeded, if ever man succeeds, in following Paul’s advice of keeping his body under.

Bishops Bompas was one of the greatest linguists the Mother Country ever produced.  Steeped in Hebrew and the classics when he entered the Northland, he immediately set himself to studying the various native languages, becoming thoroughly master of the Slavi, Beaver, Dog-Rib, and Tukudk dialects.  When Mrs. Bompas sent him a Syriac testament and lexicon, he threw himself with characteristic energy into the study of that tongue.  There is something in the picture of this devoted man writing Gospels in Slavi, primers in Dog-Rib, and a Prayer Book in syllabic Chipewyan, which brings to mind the figure of Caxton bending his silvered head over the blocks of the first printing-press in the old Almonry so many years before.  What were the “libraries” in which this Arctic Apostle did his work?  The floor of a scow on the Peace, a hole in the snow, a fetid corner of an Eskimo hut.  His “Bishop’s Palace,” when he was not afloat, consisted of a bare room twelve feet by eight, in which he studied, cooked, slept, and taught the Indians.

They tell you stories up here of seeing the good Bishop come back from a distant journey to some isolated tribe, followed at heel by a dozen little Indian babies, his disciples for the days to come.  Bishop Bompas lived in one continent, but manifested in two, keeping himself closely in touch with the religious and Church growth of the Old World.  When the British press had been given over to any particular religious-controversial subject, and the savants had finally disposed of the matter to their own satisfaction, travelling out by summer traverse or winter dog-sled would come a convincing pamphlet by Bishop Bompas, to upset altogether the conclusions of the wranglers.

There is one tale of this man which only those can appreciate who travel his trail.  An Indian lad confides to us, “Yes, my name is William Carpenter—­Bishop Bompas gave me my name, he was a good man.  He wouldn’t hurt anybody, he never hit a dog, he wouldn’t kill a mosquito.  He had not much hair on his head, and when it was meetsu, when the Bishop eat his fish, he shoo that mosquito away and he say, ’Room for you, my little friend, and room for me, but this is not your place:  go.’”

We call upon the present incumbents of the little church of St. David.  They are young people, the Rev. and Mrs. Day, putting in their first year in this Northern charge.  Their home with its spotless floors and walls papered with old copies of The Graphic and Illustrated London News is restful and attractive.  The garden of the parsonage shows an amount of patient work on the part of some one.  Potatoes eighteen inches high and peas twice the height of this, with turnips and cabbages and cauliflower are good to look at.  There are records to show that, years ago, Fort Simpson produced tomatoes and decent crops of barley.