Page 155 - La Société canadienne d'histoire de l'Église catholique - Rapport 1961
P. 155
ANNUAL ADDREBS. 151
ces of castaways upon this continent, must have occurred before
population could have had time to extend itself to the extreme
north-east of Asia and across Behring's Straits, or by induction
from island to island across the Pacific to the American coast.
In such cases, the chances would be that the crews would con-
sist of but one sex. It is painful to contemplate the condition
of such a company; cast upon an uninhabited coast; with no
hope of rescue; without the poor privilege of savage society;
left to experience the full import of the Divine verdict that it is
not good for man to be alone; left to drag out a miserable life
with the certain prospect of utter extinction; with the appalling
prospect that some one of their number must finally perish in,
utter solitude, with no one of his species to sooth his anguish or
minister to his wants; and each with the perpetual conscious-
ness that this fearful lot might be his own. How many such
forlorn crews may have perished on our coast, or what may have
been their mental anguish in view of the gloomy prospect before
them, or what were the sufferings of the last wretched survivors,
we can never know till we meet them in another life, where we
may have time and opportunity to unravel all the mysteries of
Providence concerning our race.
