The hidden depths of many a heart.”
—Frances Ridley Havergal.
In March, 1863, I was asked by the Rev. Ephraim Evans, D.D., Superintendent of Missions in British Columbia, to go to Nanaimo to teach an Indian school.
I said, “Doctor, I should like to go, but I do not know the language.”
He said, in a very decided tone of voice, “Go and learn the language. My brother James learned two or three Indian languages.” [He alluded to Rev. James Evans, the heroic missionary to Norway House, and inventor of the wonderful Cree syllabic characters.]
The very commanding way in which that statesmanlike man put it helped to inspire me to make the effort. I said to myself, “If your brother James could learn two or three languages, so can I, by the help of God.”
I was off from Victoria by the first conveyance, the little sloop Alarm, taking with us Her Majesty’s mail—there were no steamboats to Nanaimo in those days. We made the trip, some seventy-five miles from Victoria, in eight days.
Nanaimo was a small town, almost entirely built of logs, situated on a hillside facing the harbor, with a large Indian village a mile away along the shore.
We were met and cordially welcomed by Bro. Bryant—afterwards the Rev. Cornelius Bryant—at that time the oldest Methodist in British Columbia. I was soon at work in the Indian camp, in the little shell of a building built by Rev. E. Robson, which served both as a school-house and church. Brother Robson had commenced the work among the Indians, holding school for a time, until the pressure of his many other duties as pastor to the people of the neighboring town compelled him to give it up.