you all this, as Samuel would have me do were he alive. I thank you
much for your sympathy and encouragement to us. My heart is very full.
I am very grateful to you, chief. When you pray, will you ask God to
make my heart strong? I want to be faithful too, I want to meet my son
and all of you above. I ask your prayers to help me. My heart is strong
and glad now, because I have seen you and told you my heart."

One afternoon the girls in the Mission House, five in number, were
given a half-holiday, to pick berries on the opposite islands. We
availed ourselves of the fine weather and this picnic to see the
village gardens. We started in a large canoe (every Indian from his
earliest childhood can handle a paddle), towards the head of the
estuary, which leads through a labyrinth of islands, to the pine-clad
shores of the snowy mountains, nearly twenty miles distance. We landed
at some of the islands, most of which have some cultivated land. Every
man and woman had a certain portion of ground measured out by Duncan,
when the village was first settled, and set apart by him for their sole
use. As the children advance in years, an addition is made. At present
only potatoes are planted, and these are not properly attended to, for
just at the time when labour is required for weeding, hoeing, etc., all
hands are absent at the fishing stations. Duncan hopes, in course of
time, to make better arrangements. How we all enjoyed ourselves in that
holiday trip!--all of us like children escaped from school. Berries
were plentiful, and we returned by moonlight, paddling and singing
hymns alternately, till the sparkling wood fire in the Mission-room
welcomed us to our home.

One evening I was invited by Matthews (one of the elders, and a good
carpenter), to hear him perform on a parlour organ, which he had bought
at Victoria for 80 dollars (L16). It was a wondrous sight--the Indian