execution.  During this interval, the missionaries had the pleasure of seeing the work of the Lord continue to prosper in the three settlements, and a spirit of love spread abroad among their flocks.  “Our Saviour’s grace and power,” say they, July 1822, “have been made manifest in young and old, and the word of his cross, sufferings, and death, performs the same miracles, as in the earliest periods of Christianity.  When we met to celebrate the holy communion, as well as on the different festival and memorial days of the church, the grace and presence of our Lord and Saviour revived our hearts and filled us with joy, and with praise and thanksgiving to him for all the good which he has done unto this people.”—­Procuring their food almost always at the hazard of their lives, instances of wonderful preservations were not uncommon among the Esquimaux, and their observations on their deliverances had generally a pious simplicity, which rendered them extremely pleasant.  This year, Ephraim, a communicant, went with five others to catch seals at the edge of the ice, about sixty miles from Nain.  Being at some distance from his party, the ice broke under him, and he had only time to grasp the rim of the hole made in the ice to prevent his sinking under it.  In this situation, hanging over the sea, the cold being intense, his fingers froze fast to the ice, which helped to support him; for his immediate cries for assistance were not heard, and he remained for a quarter of an hour in dreadful suspense.  At length, just when his voice failed him, he was perceived by his companions and his life saved.  Though his fright and anxiety were in the beginning very great, he said, that he committed himself to our Saviour, and felt resigned to his will; and when the danger seemed most imminent, help was afforded, for which he gave thanks to Him who alone could deliver in such distress.

But an interposition of providence, which rescued two Christian Esquimaux, belonging to the congregation at Hopedale, who were carried out to sea on a field of ice, and were nine days driven about at the mercy of the waves, is not the least extraordinary among the many which occurred.  A party of three, Conrad, Peter, and Titus, being engaged in fishing on the ice, that part on which they were standing broke loose from the shore, and was driven by a strong south-west wind out to sea.  Conrad having a sledge with him, fastened some seal-skins and bladders to it to keep him buoyant, and turning it upside down used it as a raft; in this he paddled a full English mile back to the firm ice, being commissioned by his companions to procure a boat, and send it to their assistance.  The sea, by God’s mercy, being calm, he reached the shore in safety, but before he could procure the boat, the field of ice with his two companions on it had drifted nearly out of sight, and there was no possibility of overtaking it.  The size and strength of the ice was such that it afforded them the means of building a snow-house upon it, in which