CHAPTER IV.

EARL DUFFERIN AND OTHERS TESTIFY.

STATESMEN, explorers, naval officers, travellers, merchants, and missionaries, on returning to England and the United States, after visiting the North Pacific, gave impressive accounts of Mr. Duncan's remarkable work. These accounts are, unfortunately, for the most part buried in huge reports, or interspersed through books which are of a more or less technical or special character, having interest but to the few.

However, I shall quote some extracts which I have gleaned from the writings of a few of those who have visited Mr. Duncan's mission, or studied his methods and work.

An event of no little importance in the history of Metlakahtla, during the year 1876, was the visit of Lord Dufferin, when Governor-General of Canadaaccompanied by Lady Dufferin. Their reception was extremely cordial.

The following address was presented by the natives.

"TO HIS EXCELLENCY THE EARL OF Dufferin, GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF THE DOMINION OF

CANADA:

"May it Please Your Excellency,-We, the inhabitants of Metlakahtla, of the Tsimshean nation of Indians, desire to express our joy in welcoming your Excellency and Lady Dufferin to our village. Under the teaching of the Gospel we have learned the Divine command, Fear God, honor the King,' and thus as loyal subjects of her Majesty Queen Victoria we rejoice in seeing you visit our shores.

"We have learned to respect and obey the laws of the Queen, and we will continue to uphold and defend the same in our community and nation.

"We are still a weak and poor people, only lately emancipated from the thraldom of heathenism and savage customs; but we are struggling to rise and advance to a Christian life and civilization.

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Trusting that we may enjoy a share of your Excellency's kind and fostering care, and under your administration continue to advance in peace and prosperity,

"We have the honor to subscribe, ourselves, your Excellency's humble and obedient servant, "For the Indians of Metlakahtla,

"DAVID LEASK,

"Secretary to the Native Council."

The Governor-General replied as follows:

"I have come a long distance in order to assure you, in the name of your Great Mother, the Queen of England, with what pleasure she has learned of your well-being, and of the progress you have made in the arts of peace and the knowledge of the Christian religion, under the auspices of your kind friend, Mr. Duncan. You must understand that I have not come for my own pleasure, but that the journey has been long and laborious, and that I am here from a sense of duty, in order to make you feel, by my actual presence, with what solicitude the Queen, and Her Majesty's Government in Canada, watch over your welfare, and how anxious they are that you should persevere in that virtuous and industrious mode of life in which I find you engaged. I have viewed with astonishment the church which you have built entirely by your own industry and intelligence. That church is in itself a monument of the way in which you have profited by the teachings you have received. It does you the greatest credit, and we have every right to hope that, while in its outward aspect it bears testimony to your conformity to the laws of the Gospel, beneath its sacred roof your sincere and faithful prayers will be rewarded, by those blessings which are promised to all those who approach the throne of God, in humility and faith. I hope you will understand that your White Mother and the Government of Canada are Fully prepared to protect you in the exercise of your

religion, and to extend to you those laws which know no difference of race or of color, but under which justice is impartially administered between the humblest and the greatest in the land.

"The Government of Canada is proud to think that there are upward of thirty thousand Indians in the territory of British Columbia alone. She recognizes them as the ancient inhabitants of the country. The white men have not come among you as conquerors, but as friends. We regard you as our fellow-subjects, and as equal to us in the eye of the law as you are in the eye of God, and equally entitled with the rest of the community to the benefits of good government, and the opportunity of earning an honest livelihood.

"I have had very great pleasure in inspecting your school, and I am quite certain that there are many, among the younger portion of those I am now addressing, who have already begun to feel how much they are indebted to that institution, for the expansion of their mental faculties, for the knowledge of what is passing in the outer world, as well as for the insight it affords them into the laws of nature, and into the arts of civilized life; and we have the further satisfaction of remembering that, as year after year flows by and your population increases, all those beneficial influences will acquire additional strength and momentum.

"I hope you are duly grateful to him to whom, under Providence, you are indebted for all these

benefits, and that when you constrast your own condition, the peace in which you live, the comforts that surround you, the decency of your habitation-when you see your wives, your sisters, and your daughters contributing so materially by the brightness of their appearance, the softness of their manners, their housewifely qualities, to the pleasantness and cheerfulness of your domestic lives, contrasting as all these do so strikingly with your former surroundings, you will remember that it is to Mr. Duncan you owe this blessed initiation into your new life.

“By a faithful adherence to his principles and his example you will become useful citizens and faithful subjects, an honor to those under whose auspices you will thus have shown to what the Indian race can attain, at the same time that you will leave to your children an ever-widening prospect of increasing happiness and progressive improvement.

"Before I conclude I cannot help expressing to Mr. Duncan and those associated with him in his good work, not only in my own name, not only in the name of the Government of Canada, but also in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, and in the name of the people of England, who take so deep an interest in the wellbeing of all the native races throughout the Queen's dominions, our deep gratitude to him for thus having devoted the flower of his life, in spite of innumerable difficulties, dangers, and discouragements, of which we, who only see the result of his labors, can form only