twenty-four years, and remembering what wonderful and blessed fruit has
sprung from the seed thus quietly sown, it will be interesting to
reproduce here the Christian officer's own words:--

_Captain Prevost's Memorandum, July, 1856._

"The country within which the proposed Mission is designed to operate
extends from about the 48 deg. of north latitude to 56 deg., and from the
Rocky Mountains on the east to the Pacific Ocean on the west. It includes
several beautiful and fertile islands adjoining the mainland, of which
the largest, most important, and most populous, is Vancouver's, being
about 290 miles in length and 55 miles in its average breadth.

"The Government, impressed with a sense of its great commercial, and
its growing political, importance, combining also great advantages as a
naval station, erected it into a colony in 1838, and gave to the
Hudson's Bay Company a charter, conferring on them certain privileges
on condition of their carrying into effect the intentions of the
Government. The climate of this island is more genial than that of
England, its soil is more productive, and its coasts abound with the
finest fish. It contains, too, the only safe harbours between the 49 deg.
north latitude and San Francisco, and there have been discovered lately
fields of fine coal of immense extent, from which the entire coast of
the Pacific, and the steamers trading there, can be supplied. What has
been stated with regard to these natural advantages of Vancouver's
Island applies generally to the mainland."

"The seat of the Colonial Government is at Fort Victoria, where there
is a chaplain, the only Protestant minister within the limits of the
above mentioned territories. About three years since a Roman Catholic