4 LIFE-WORK

necessitated the mastery of another alphabet of which the translator may have no further use after the present undertaking is completed. W'riting in his Diary on March 16th, 1884, he tells how he had been for two weeks reading a copy of the Scriptures in Eskimo, kindly loaned by Dr. Sawyer, of Acadia; and that portion of his Diary written while on his tour through what was then called “Western Canada,” abounds with Indian words used by the different tribes in that section. There are complete lists of the first decade of numer— als in the languages of the Mohawks, Onedias, Senecas, Ceyugas, Onondagas, and Tuscaroros, and such words as " bread,” “ milk,” etc., are traced through all the different dialects. Nor was Dr. Rand satisfied with gathering what he could from the languages used in the schools and forests of Canada; he became more or less famil- iar with German, Italian, Spanish and Portugese; and, to cap the climax, the page of the Diary which relates a conversation with a returned Burman Missionary is adorned with a number of Burmese words.

\Vhen we realize the marvellous progress he made as a linguist, we can, only after an e"ort, believe the well authenticated statement that this man was a plain farmer and stone-mason, with a most meagre education, when, at twenty-three years of age, he presented himself at the Academy in connection with Acadia College, at Wolf- ville, Nova Scotia. To him, “learning” had never been a task, and he seized upon each opportunity with all the enthusiasm of his buoyant nature. He says:——“ My first lesson in Latin was taken the first night of the four weeks I spent in Horton Academy. I heard a fellow—student, the late Wellington Jackson, repeat over and over again: ‘The words opus and mm signifying ‘need,’ require the ablative, as, Est 0pm petunia, ‘ There is need of money.’ That rule, and the truth it contained, was so impressed upon my memory, and was such a perfect illustration of my own circumstances that I

never forgot it.’7

His stay at the Academy was brief, but he had made good use of his opportunities, and from that time on he was, in the fullest sense of the word, a student. He says that in the spring of 1833 he returned to the work of a stone-mason and the study of Latin. In