“The schools, which are held, with both children and adults, from November to April, are a most powerful means of forwarding their improvement in every thing good and profitable for them.  Most of the people attend them with great diligence, and with an earnest desire to be soon able to read the New Testament for themselves.  There are among the children some of five, and even of four years of age, who read well.  The severest punishment than can be inflicted on a child is to keep him from school.  The new Hymn Book is a truly valuable present.  The whole number of Christian Esquimaux under the care of the brethren, at present, is 705, old and young.”

Excepting that their numbers continued gradually to increase, the above report may be considered as a correct view of the state of the Moravian settlements in Labrador for several succeeding years.

Some Ladies in Scotland, who had admired the exertions of the Moravians in Labrador, had about this time sent as a token of their Christian affection a small present to the beloved labourers in that distant inhospitable clime; they were gratified, nearly under the above date [at the close of 1831,] by the following letter from two aged servants of the Lord, the venerable missionary Kmoch and his wife, who, after nearly half a century of active exertion, reluctantly retired from the heat of the day—­it was addressed to a friend in Edinburgh, and shortly but sweetly corroborates the account of Kohlmeister.

“The Saviour continues,” say they, “to bless his own work in Labrador.  In Okkak, during the last winter, eight adults and thirteen children were baptized, and six persons are longing for the enjoyment of the holy supper for the first time.  In the harvest of 1830 a malignant cold and cough raged in Okkak, of which eighteen persons died, but last winter the weather was very mild.  I have been 34 and my wife 19 years in Labrador.  I would willingly have remained among our dear Esquimaux much longer, but old age and sickness are the cause of our return.  The parting with our Esquimaux, and our dear fellow-labourers, was very affecting.”

At length the obstacles in the way of a new settlement began to dissipate; and in the mean time, to secure possession of the bounds allotted to them by the British Government, the missionaries, Kmoch and Sturman, in 1828, erected a block-house twelve feet long and eight broad, which the summer before had been prepared at Okkak, and sent to Kangertluksoak by some Esquimaux returning to the north.  They completed the journey on sledges in fifteen hours, of which they transmitted the following notes—­“May 19th, at eight in the evening we arrived at Apparnaviarsak, in the neighbourhood of Kangertluksoak; here we found four tents of our Esquimaux, and in three, others of the Nain people who had resolved the next summer to go to Okkak:  all expressed the greatest joy at our coming, and all frankly reached out their hands to welcome us.  Immediately a tent was erected