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 contrast 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 example you will become useful citizens and faithful
subjects, an honour 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 well-being 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 labours, can form only a very inadequate idea, to a
work which has resulted in the beautiful scene we have witnessed this
morning. I only wish to add that I am very much obliged to you for the