CHAPTER XXI. _BRITISH COLUMBIA--ITS INTERESTS AND RESOURCES._ “‘Rejoice with trembling,’ may we think of this, When life’s full cup is with Thy bounty crowned, That so we be not blinded by our bliss, Or fall asleep upon ‘enchanted ground.’” --_Barton._ It seems appropriate, in closing this record of my first twelve years of missionary labor, that something should be said concerning the progress made in the Indian work in British Columbia, as well as in the settlement and development of this one-time colony, but now the richest and most wonderful province, from the standpoint of natural resources and marvellous possibilities, in the Dominion of Canada. It is only a short time since British Columbia was described as “a sea of mountains,” uninhabited and uninhabitable except at long distances; covered with forests, a great part of which were inaccessible; its rivers filled with fish, and its river beds streaked with gold. The marvellous resources of the country were little dreamed of by Canadians--as the inhabitants of Ontario and Quebec were alone called--when I reached home on this first visit. Speaking to large audiences in the leading cities and towns in the East, of the great cedars and firs, which attain immense proportions, “sometimes towering three hundred feet in the air, and having a base circumference of from thirty to fifty feet”--of whole forests of these magnificent trees that would average one hundred and fifty feet clear of limbs, and five to six feet in diameter--the people appeared incredulous. And when I turned to the subject of fish and told them I had seen in a small stream flowing into the Fraser River the large salmon so numerous that in forcing their way up the stream they had rubbed off their fins and tails, my audience looked at one another. When I went on and told them of having seen a wave come in at Departure Bay, on the east coast of Vancouver Island, and deposit bushels of herring on the shore, the preachers on the platform pulled my coat and said, “Oh, Crosby, that is an awful fish story!” But when I went on and spoke of crossing a little stream in the upper Chilliwack Valley, and of my little pony stepping on some of the beautiful silver salmon that lay thick in the stream, and that they jumped about so violently as to nearly knock the animal off his feet, the people laughed outright, “Oh! Oh! Oh!” and I knew they did not believe me.