6 THE CARIBOO TRAIL

in fact, the company owned the colony, and
its will was supreme in the government. John
Work was the company’s chief factor at Vic-
toria and Finlayson was chief trader.

Because California and Oregon had gone
American, some small British warships lay at
Esquimalt harbour. The little fort had ex-
panded beyond the stockade. The governor's
house was to the east of the stockade. A
new church had been built, and the Rev.
Edward Cridge, afterwards known as Bishop
Cridge, was the rector. Two schools had been
built. Inside the fort were perhaps forty-five
employees. Inside and outside lived some
eight hundred people. But grass grew in the
roads. There was no noise but the church
bell or the fort bell, or the flapping of a sail
while a ship came to anchor. Three hundred
acres about the fort were worked by the com-
pany as a farm, which gave employment to
about two dozen workmen, and on which were
perhaps a hundred cattle and a score of brood
mares. The company also had a saw-miil.
Buildings of huge, squared timbers flanked
three sides of the inner stockades—the dining-
hall, the cook-house, the bunk-house, the store,
the trader’s house. There were two bastions,
and from each cannon pointed. Close to the