Museum Nores | Se i

Crusoe life, and such men as Lord, who, from large experience knew how to “rough
it” smoothly, and extract pleasure and profit from drawbacks and dangers, were ever
prized, and obeyed with ale ity and an affection sui generis, and unknown to those
who “sit at home at ease.”

My first introduction to Mr. Lord was in 1858, about the close of the year, as
well as I can remember. It was just after my arrival at Vancouver Island, and whilst
the guest of another of our great and modest scientific men, Captain George Richards,
R.N., then at the head of the Hydrographic Survey out there, now Admiral Richards,
the Hydrographer at the Admirality. Captain Richards took me over from Thetis
Cottage, on the shores of Esquimalt Harbour, to the temporary encampment of the
Royal Engineers and Sappers who were about to proceed to mark out the boundary
between British and United States territory, the ill-starred treaty that bred the San
Juan difficulty, which, I fear, only slumbers even now.

They were all in the highest possible spirits, with Lord the soul of the party; full
of the strange enterprise which had fallen to their lot, and displaying the apparatus,
scientific instruments, arms, and stores which were waiting to be shipped off to the
mainland.

The cutting of the boundary was effected thus: The British and American Govern-
ments had agreed that the dividing line between the possessions of the two countries
should be the 49th parallel of lattitude from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean.
Each Government sent out a detachment of scientific men from their army to find out
the 49th parallel, and then permanently made the line a fixed frontier. The expedition
was called the Boundary Commission.

The officers, by astronomical observations, agreed upon the line, and then the sappers
cut it. Now none who have not been in primaeval forests can form any idea of the
toil and peril of living always and working in them. All forests in merry Old England
are but woods and copses compared with the solemn realities of the colossal American
provinces under timber, bearding mountain ranges, covering mighty plains, and holding
the whole country in the silent but absolute power of one vast army of monsters, to
root up each of which costs the poor colonist many a dollar, many a tear, and not a
little sweat of the brow. Well, from ocean to range had this forest army to be attached,
and a lane cut about fonty yards wide, all along the 49th parallel, making, when com-
pleted, a great “gangway” from the Rocky Mountain to Pacific Ocean. As the forest
would soon replace the sturdy, obstinate warrior pines cut down by the sappers, some
permanent memorial had to be used to keep the boundary marked for future gener-
ations. Iron posts were sunk in the centre of the great road-clearing to effect this
end; upon each, in the casting, is embossed in large letters, “Boundary Treaty, 1844.”
On the one side of the 49th parallel is our British Columbia, and upon the other the
American Washington Territory.

Whilst they were thus busy preparing the new land for civilization, my duty in
the church militant was as a pioneer to be preparing it for evangelization. As pioneer.
my first work lay very near theirs: at Fort Langley, between twenty and thirty miles,
as the crow flies, from the 49th parallel, I built the very first church and parsonage
in that great colony of British Columbia, as large as France and part of Spain, and
the Colony which, by forming the complement of the Grand Canadian Confederation
(“The Dominion”) upon the Pacific seaboard, gives the whole inter-oceanic range of
British North America to Great Britain, for commerce, colonization, and strategic
purposes. This first church was built in 1859. Soon after the devoted and able Bishop
Hills came out with a large and symmetrical church organization; and in no colony