I asked if we had got all the liquor, and Tom, feeling bad at losing his, nodded to me, pointing to the boxes on which the women sat, as much as to say, “There is more liquor there.” But try as we could, the women remained firm, sitting like statues, and we could not remove them.
Turning to Tom I said, “I might have had you put in the ‘skookum-house’” (as they call the jail), “but I want you to do better. Will you be a better Indian and stop this business?”
He readily promised. Then I called to the boys in my canoe to hand me the case of liquor, and taking the bottles two by two, I smashed them together until they were all destroyed. Just as the last two were going the young fellow, Jacob, who had worked so well and had evidently come with us in expectation of being able to secure a little more, reached to me and said, “Oh, do let us have a little, sir!” Poor fellows, how feebly they seemed to realize the awful effects upon themselves of strong drink.
Up To My Neck in the Sea.
A few days after this I had been preaching to settlers on Salt Spring Island, and while visiting a settler on the east side, a young Indian came rushing into the house crying out, “Mr. Crosby, Mr. Crosby, whiskey, whiskey!” and pointed to the beach, where he said there were some northern Indians selling liquor.
We started down to the shore. I ran some distance above where he said the canoe was, and got down on the beach, where I could now see them bartering away whiskey from their big canoe to parties camped on the shore. I made one straight bolt for them, jumped on board the canoe, and began throwing out their coal oil cans of whiskey. While I was doing this, four big fellows were pushing off their canoe from the shore and carrying me with them out to sea. In a moment I made a plunge for the shore, coming up to my neck in the water, and got to land. We destroyed the whiskey and shouted after the savages that they must stop their unlawful deeds.
My readers may wonder why the missionary took the risks he did, and interfered in matters that may seem to be outside of his regular evangelistic work. It was because he recognized this terrible traffic as the greatest enemy to the work in which he was engaged, and firmly believed that in fighting it he was taking the most practical method of preaching the Gospel to a people who were being destroyed, soul and body, by this trade in strong drink.
The Whiskey Synagogue.
At Departure Bay, near Nanaimo, there was a notorious resort, properly licensed, of course, but kept by a wretched fellow who made no pretence at keeping the law.
This place went by the name of “The Synagogue,” and was suspected of being the quarter from which many of the Indians, on their way north, secured their supply of liquor. Besides this, on an island near by, a quarry had been opened by a gentlemanly American, getting out stone for the new Mint Building in San Francisco. The nearness of this liquor joint resulted in continued drunkenness among the workmen at the quarry, and consequently the neglect of their work.