II.

THE CALL, AND THE MAN.


The Red Indian is in a peculiar sense, the child of the Church
Missionary Society. More exclusively so, indeed, than even the Negro.
In those efforts for the evangelisation of Africa with which the
Society's name has, from the first, been so indissolubly associated, it
has but shared the field with other excellent societies. In the Far
North and Far West of British America, it has laboured almost alone.
Nearly sixty years have passed away since its missionaries penetrated
into the then remote regions of the Red River, and since that time,
nearly the whole of the vast territories, stretching northward to the
Arctic Sea, eastward to the borders of Labrador, and westward to the
Rocky Mountains, have been trodden by their untiring feet. It was
fitting, therefore, that when, in the providence of God, the day came
for the Gospel to reach beyond the Rocky Mountains to the tribes on the
shores of the Pacific, it should be carried thither by the Church
Missionary Society.

But long before that time arrived, the eye of the Committee, passing
round the globe, had rested upon those distant shores. In their Annual
Report for 1819-20, the following interesting passage is to be found:--

_From the C. M. S. Report_, 1819-20.

"It has been suggested to the Committee that the Western parts of
British America, lying between the high ridge called the Rocky
Mountains and the North Pacific Ocean, and extending from about the