CANADIAN HISTORY READERS

life. He had separated a lawfully married
and baptized man from his paramour. The
rejected unbaptized woman, learning of this,
took a rope and went out into the woods that
night and hanged herself. Whereupon her re-
lations and co-tribesmen and women uprose,
the former armed with their rifles and the lat-
ter uttering the most excited and shrill out-
cries, rushed to kill Father Morice, holding
him as the party responsible for the death of
the rejected woman. They were met, how- °
ever, by parties of Christian Babines who,
by dint of reasoning and even force, pre-
vented them from accomplishing their pur-
pose. All this took place, too, after mid-
night, when Indians are bravest.

. It may be noted here that it was during
Father Morice’s stay at Stuart Lake that he
began his profound study of Indian dialects.
Stuart Lake, which is situated some seven
hundred miles north of Vancouver, was an
ideal Indian post. There was not a white man
settled in the whole district, which extended
irom Fort George (to-day Prince George),
in the south, to Bear Lake, two hundred and
twenty-five miles from the centre in the
north, including Babine Lake, Hazelton,

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