satiable desire for intoxicating liquors; and though they are here excluded from the use of spirits, and the settlers are fined when detected in supplying them with ale, yet, from the great extent of the colony, they too often contrive to gratify that debasing inclination, to which they are ready to sacrifice everything they possess. They feel no gratitude to their benefactors, or spiritual teachers; and, while they lose the haughty independence of savage life, they ac- quire at once all the bad qualities of the white man, but are slow, indeed, in imitating his industry and his virtues.[1]
Indian lads, educated in the Church Missionary Society's school at Red River, have been sent to instruct their countrymen in various parts of the Company's territory. In the countries of the Columbia and New Caledonia, to the westward of the great Rocky mountain chain, the missionary labours promise considerable success. There the climate is softened by the influences of the Pacific; food is abundant; the numerous natives do not lead the same solitary wandering lives as
- ↑ Yet among the native tribes there exist marked distinctions. The swampy Crees, who have long been employed in the Company's service at York Factory and other places, adopt steady habits with far greater facility than the proud Saulteaux, who contemptuously term the settlers gardeners and diggers of the ground.
