for years enemies, now shook hands and embraced each other with the affection of long-separated friends; sisters, wives and daughters, long captives, fell into each other’s arms, weeping for joy.  A chief’s daughter was seen running to embrace her father’s feet, a wife hastened to welcome her husband and children, and entire towns were filled with cries of gladness.  The beatitude, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” belongs to Mr. Thompson.

Ill health at length compelled Mr. Thompson to relinquish the work in Africa, and in 1856 he returned to Oberlin, Ohio, where he spent five years in publishing his book on Africa, entitled, “Palm Land,” and in educating two boys whom he brought with him from Africa.  In 1861 he removed with his family to northwestern Michigan, where he labored as a home missionary for eighteen years, being the pastor for fifteen years of a church which he established.  He then returned to Oberlin, where he remained until his death in 1893.  In all these years Mr. Thompson was a laborious and useful man, actively engaged in awakening the churches to an interest in Africa, in writing his books and educating his children.  In his later years, while living in Oberlin, he was abundant in labors in connection with Sunday-schools and feeble churches in Ohio and other States.

* * * * *

A PIONEER MISSIONARY AMONG THE INDIANS.

In 1843 a number of young men from Oberlin entered upon a mission among the Ojibway Indians in the northern part of what is now Minnesota, under the auspices of the Western Evangelical Missionary Society, which was soon afterward transferred to the American Missionary Association.  Of the inaccessibility of this field, a competent authority has said:  “There is probably no missionary field to-day on the face of the earth more difficult to reach than this was at that time.”

[Illustration:  REV.  S.G.  WRIGHT.]

Among this group of missionaries was Rev. S.G.  Wright.  As a part of his experience it is said that after a short visit at home, Mr. Wright returned to the mission taking his young wife with him—­their wedding tour.  It was a journey of over a month made in a canoe.  They were both compelled to walk at intervals twenty-two miles in the swamps along the side of the stream until they reached Mr. Barnard’s station.  These walks were varied by sickness; Mr. Wright sometimes had chills every day, but at Mr. Barnard’s station he recovered.  There remained yet twenty miles of their journey, and this was undertaken on foot, but soon a storm brought five inches of snow.  Mr. Wright says:  “My wife was very lame, and what woman would not be after walking twenty long miles through mire and water, over high hills and through gullies, in snow from four to five inches deep?”