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. My pupils were a wild-looking lot of little folk, with painted and dirt-begrimed faces and long, uncombed hair. Some of them were clothed in little print shirts, others had a small piece of blanket pinned around them, while some had no clothing at all. One of the first difficulties was my ignorance of their language. Hence I had to use the language of signs. Beckoning and pointing to the school-house, I sought to persuade them to come into school. They would look at me, laugh at my efforts, and make a bolt for the bushes near by. Sometimes I made an attempt to capture them, but they would run like wild hares, and I could not get near them. I had always a love for children, and prided myself on my ability to win them; but these, I was afraid, were going to outdo me. [Illustration: INDIAN CHURCH AND MISSION HOUSE AT NANAIMO.] Finally I took an Indian with me to the woods and secured two stout poles or posts, with which we fixed up a swing at the back of the school-house. Then I started again with my sign language, and at last succeeded in getting one of them into the swing. As I swung the little fellow to and fro I noticed the others peeping out curiously from among the bushes. Pointing to the swing and then to the school-house, I beckoned to them, as much as to say, “If you come here and have a swing you will have to go to school.” By this means I got acquainted with them and won their confidence. As I saw the difficulty of reaching them, my struggle to secure a knowledge of their language became intense. Often in the night I would be found on my knees praying to God to help me to get my tongue around the difficult guttural tones.