not neglect those who are to die by force of law, but we should pay more attention to those who may yet live for years of blessing or blighting. In and out of prison it is best to make the life right and the death will be satisfactory.

I have already written at too great length, but I cannot close without saying a few words about Post-Prison work. I fear we are not doing our duty in looking after and helping discharged prisoners. On the other hand I know that the wicked imps of Satan are doing all they can to help them back to their old life and haunts of vice, often planning welcoming carousals for the night after discharge. I have seen lecherous louts, villainous vampires, called men, hanging round the prison gateway to waylay and entice discharged women, furnishing another instance of the fact that the children of this world are not only wiser but more persistent in their evil methods than the children of light.

Few persons can imagine the feelings of those who pass out of the prison doors into the crowded, busy and relentless world. Some convicts come out of prison hardened in sin and determined to continue their reckless, predatory life. Others have seen the folly, if not the guilt, of their wrong-doing, and pass out with changed purposes to do better, or at least to avoid future detection. A few come out with entirely changed natures, with past guilt pardoned, to make a new start in life, if the world will only let them. By far the largest number are weak people who find it hard to resist frequent enticements to do wrong, and live down the odium of prison life.

All these need the cheery "God bless you," and the practical helping hand of wise and hearty Christian workers to tide them over the first dangerous period, when temptation is strong and relapse into wrong easy, helping them to honest employment, and encouraging them to continued exertion by timely but not demoralizing assistance.

This last-named work, that of assisting discharged prisoners to honest employment, is of incalculable importance. An ordinary out-of-work who has not come out of prison can make unsuccessful application to dozens of places for work, but two or three refusals to a discharged convict make him feel that he is a marked man, and that whereas he was once walled in from the outside world he is now walled out from remunerative toil and respectable business.

I take pleasure in commending the work of the Prisoners' Aid Society of Ontario, both in and out of prison, and am glad they are trying to overtake the needs for this work. It has opened a Home for discharged prisoners at 150 Simcoe Street, and is endeavouring to help some back to honest lives.

THE REV. JAMES EVANS.

SCENES IN THE GREAT NORTH LAND.

BY THE REV. E. R. YOUNG.*

WITHOUT question, the Rev. James Evans was the grandest and most successful of all our Indian missionaries. Of him it can be said most emphatically, while others have done well, he excelled them all.

In burning zeal, in heroic efforts, in journeyings oft, in tact that never failed in many a trying hour in success most marvellous, in a vivacity and sprightliness that never succumbed to discouragement, in a faith that never faltered, and in a solicitude for the spread of our blessed Christianity that never grew less, James Evans stands among us without a peer.

If full accounts of his long journeys in the wilds of the great North-West could be written, they would equal in thrilling interest anything of the kind known in modern missionary annals There is hardly an Indian Mission of any prominence to-day in the whole of the vast North-West, whether belonging to the Church of England, the Roman Catholic, or the Methodist Church, that James Evans did not commence; and the reason why the Methodist Church to day does not hold them all is, because the Church did not respond to his thrilling appeals, and send in men to take possession and hold the fields as fast as they were successfully opened up by him.

From the northern shores of Lake Superior away to the ultima Thule that lies beyond the waters of Athabasca and Slave Lakes, where the Aurora Borealis holds high carnival; from the beautiful prairies of the Bow and Saskatchewan Rivers to the muskegs and sterile regions of Hudson's Bay; from the fair and fertile domains of Red and Assiniboia Rivers, to the foot-hills of the Rocky Mountains, enduring footprints of James Evans may still be seen.

At many a camp-fire, and in many a lonely wigwam, old Indians yet linger, whose eyes brighten and whose tongues wax eloquent as they recall that man whose deeds live on, and whose converts from a degrading paganism are still to be counted by

scores.

His canoe trips were often of many weeks' duration, and extended for thousands of miles. No river seemed too rapid, and no

* Abridged from "By Canoe and Dog-Train." Toronto: Wm. Briggs.

lake too stormy, to deter him in his untiring zeal to find out the Indian in his solitudes, and preach to him the ever-blessed Gospel. Ever on the look-out for improvements to aid him in more rapid transit through the country, Mr. Evans constructed a canoe out

of sheet tin. This the Indians called the "Island of light," on account of its flashing back the sun's rays as it glided along, propelled by the strong paddles in the hands of the well-trained crew. With them they carried in this novel craft solder and soldering

iron, and when they had the misfortune to run upon a rock they went ashore and quickly repaired the injured place.

Mr. Evans had been for years a minister and missionary in the Canadian Methodist Church. With the Rev. William Case he had been very successfully employed among the Indians in the Province of Ontario. When the English Wesleyan Society decided to begin work among the neglected tribes in the Hudson's Bay Territories, the Rev. James Evans was the man appointed to be the leader of the devoted band. In order to reach Norway House, which was to be his first principal Mission, his household. effects had to be shipped from Toronto to England, and thence reshipped to York Factory on the Hudson Bay. From this place. they had to be taken up by boats to Norway House in the interior, a distance of five hundred miles. Seventy times had they to be lifted out of these inland boats and carried along the portages around falls and cataracts ere they reached their destination.

Mr. Evans himself went by boat from Toronto. The trip from Thunder Bay in Lake Superior to Norway House was performed in a birch bark canoe. Hundreds of Indians listened to his burning messages, and great good was done by him and his faithful companions in arms, among them being the heroic Mr. Barnley, and Mr. Rundle, of the English Wesleyan Church.

The great work of Mr. Evans' life, and that with which his name will be ever associated, was undoubtedly the invention and perfecting of what is now so widely known as the Cree Syllabic Characters. What first led him to this invention was the difficulty he and others had in teaching the Indians to read in the ordinary way. They are hunters, and so are very much on the move, like the animals they seek.

The principle of the characters which he adopted is phonetic. There are no silent letters. Each character represents a syllable; hence no spelling is required. As soon as the alphabet is mastered, and a few additional secondary signs, some of which represent consonants, and some aspirates, and some partially change the sound of the main character, the Indian student, be he a man or woman of eighty, or a child of six years, can commence at the first chapter of Genesis and read on, slowly of course at first, but in a few days with surprising ease and accuracy.

Many were Mr. Evans' difficulties in perfecting this invention and putting it in practical use, even after he had got the scheme clear and distinct in his own mind. He was hundreds of miles away from civilization. Very little, indeed, had he with which to work. Yet with him there was no such word as failure. Obtaining, as a great favour, the thin sheets of lead that were around

the tea-chests of the fur traders, he melted these down into little bars, and from them cut out his first types. His ink was made

AT THE FOOT OF THE RAPIDS. WITH HIS LIGHT CANOE HE CAN GO ALMOST ANYWHERE."

out of the soot of the chimneys, and his first paper was birch bark. After a good deal of effort, and the exercise of much ingenuity, he made a press, and then the work began.

Great, indeed, was the amazement and delight of the Indians