A Winter Circuit of Our Arctic Coast; A Narrative of a Journey with Dog-Sleds Around the Entire Arctic Coast of Alaska

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... n KOTZEBUE SOUND TO POINT HOPE Sunday was a glad day of rest after a week's uninterrupted travel in which we had made close to 250 miles, and the village of Kotzebue was all too full of interest for so brief a stay. A visit on Saturday night to the postmaster, who is also the missionary, brought me word from Point Barrow and Point Hope that at both places we were expected, and brought me also to an interesting gathering in which I was very glad to see that translation of devotional exercises into the Eskimo language was in progress. Whenever an earnest man labours amongst these people, whether it be a Jesuit priest at St. Michael, a "Friend" at Kotzebue Sound, a Presbyterian at Point Barrow or a Church-of-England missionary at Herschel Island, he finds himself presently not content with the parrot-like singing or saying of devotions in a strange language, Latin or English, and goes to work as best he may to turn them into the mother tongue. My observation the next morning at the public service confirmed me in the impression that any translation into the native tongue, however faulty it may be, is preferable to English hymns got by rote and sung, it was impossible to believe otherwise, with little or no sense of the meaning of most of the words. Two or three, here and there, of the better taught amongst the large congregation had doubtless more understanding, but for the majority I am sure that my old schoolboy rounds, "Glorious Apollo," or "Pray, Sir, be so good," would have been as effective mediums of praise and edification--besides being better English and better music; for the hymns most used by these congregations are distinctly of the baser sort. Every lover of English hymnody must deplore the vogue of the modern trash and its...