MISSIONARY 41

it was estimated would make a total of some 1,600 souls,"”

The district of the new incumbent of Stuart Lake Mission was therefore a most important one, especi- ally if we consider that it did not comprise a single Protestant within its perimeter, and that each and every one of its inhabitants fell directly under the sway and action of our missionary. Neither must we omit to remark that some of the points to be visited were very far apart, and generally without any other means of communication than the waters of turbulent lakes and swift rivers, or very primitive trails, which in places could not be discovered save by the keen eye of the Indian."®

1” Those Indians owe their name to the fact that, after the burning of a hunter’s body, his widow formerly “carried’’ on her back, in a satchel of birch bark the little bones of her dead husband which had escaped the action of the flames.

18 Of wagon roads there was not half a mile in the whole country, for the good reason that anything like a wheel vehicle was absolutely unknown therein. After a number of years only, ten miles of such public highway were built by the traders of the H. B. Co. between lakes Babine and Stuart, to cart the pelts and dried salmon from the post on the former to that of Fort St. James, on the latter.