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Pts Bs eS

RSS

14 Snapshots from the North Pacife.

sleep, and each morning saw us thrust out into the current
with a relish for battling with it. How I should have laughed
at pity. TI rather pitied my former self wrestling with the
work and worry of a laree Yorkshire parish.

“ My purpose took me into every cluster of Indian lodges.
I advise the luvers of the picturesque to content themselves
with a distant view. Dirt prevails over all. It partly
accounts for the Indians’ roving habits. A few years of
Staying at home would immure them within a rampart of
dirt. They make a new home rather than cleanse the old
one.

“I saw no time should be lost when I came here in the
spring. As IT could send no teacher I changed my own plans,
and instead of settling in my newly-built house at Fort
Simpson came up here, and though ill-prepared, began opera-
tions in the heart of the enemy’s country. Mrs. Ridley
came, too, and is the first Englishwoman who has navigated
the Skeena. Horrors and calamities were predicted, but,
happily, were falsified by the event.

“On arrival I rented a cabin, but finding the rent heavy
and the property for sale, I bought it, lest it should get into
hands inimical to Missions. After building a fireplace and
putting in glass windows, we got some native bark mats and
nailed them over the logs to keep out the wind and snow.
Fairly lodged, we feared not the cold that has kept the
mercury frozen.

“ My first operation was to open a day-school. So the
battle began. My pupils were my infantry. Few or many,
I drudged away daily at A, B, C, and 1, 2, 3. The school
grew—nearly two hundred attended. The medicine-men,
who are the priests of this heathenism, took alarm. A band
of the painted wretches danced round the entrance to the
school. As the din stopped work I stepped quickly up to
the chief performer, took him by the shoulders, and before he
could recover his self-possession, had him at the river’s brink,
assured him I should assist him further down the next time
he interrupted my work. This prompt action seemed to