"My congregation will not sit upon the forms I have had made; they
prefer to draw their dirty blankets tightly round them, and to squat on
the floor. When I am speaking, they generally rest their heads upon
their bent knees, and fix their eyes upon the floor. Not a muscle seems
to move, and they appear to drink in every word that is spoken to them,
as if they thirsted for the truth. In teaching these people I treat
them as children, but I know they have nothing of the gentleness and
simplicity of children; they are cunning, 'deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked.'"

The Roman Catholics having left a memorial of their abandoned mission
in the shape of a good school-house, which was standing idle, Mr. Hall
wrote to them at Victoria for leave to use it. The request was refused,
"because," they wrote, "our missionaries may require it again." And a
few months afterwards, when Mr. Hall was beginning to feel his way
among the people, a priest appeared at Nu-wit-ty, the northern point of
Vancouver's Island, thirty miles from Fort Rupert, just when Mr. Hall
was visiting the tribe residing there. He (the priest) called a meeting
of the Indians, concerning which Mr. Hall writes, on March 10th, 1879:--

"The Indians went to the meeting, and I went as well; probably one
hundred were present. He told them to kneel down; they did so, and then
he told them to look at him, and cross themselves as be did, and the
poor Indians followed him. He then told them about the Fall, and it was
very good what he said; but soon he spoke of a way that went to heaven,
and one that went to hell, and he told them that if they followed him
he would lead them to heaven, and that if they followed me they all
would go to hell, and I should go with them. He said he wanted to
baptize them, and then they would be as white as snow. When he spoke
against me, many Indians interrupted him, and one went up to where he