"What you want are not resources, but human beings to develope them
and consume them. Raise your 80,000 Indians to the level Mr. Duncan has
taught us they can be brought, and consider what an enormous amount of
vital power you will have added to your present strength."




XIII.

ADMIRAL PREVOST AT METLAKAHTLA.


Of the four visits mentioned at the beginning of the last chapter,
with which the last four years must ever be associated at Metlakahtla,
a very peculiar interest attaches to the third in order of time. To the
Christian Indians it was naturally the most joyous and memorable event
in the history of the settlement. It was not a small thing to receive a
Governor-General, a Missionary Bishop, or the chief pastor of their own
newly-formed diocese. But since the foundation of the settlement, there
has been no day like the 18th of June, 1878, when Metlakahtla had the
joy of welcoming, for the first time, the beloved and revered
originator of the Mission, Admiral Prevost.

He had never been in that part of the world since the migration from
Fort Simpson in 1862, and had never seen the wonderful issue of his own
plan. That he should see it now was a privilege rarely enjoyed. To few
men is it given in the Providence of God to initiate such an agency of
blessing, and to still fewer is it granted to behold such far reaching
results.