CHAPTER V. _HEATHEN STREET VS. CHRISTIAN STREET._ “O fill me with Thy fullness, Lord, Until my very heart o’erflow In kindling thought and glowing word, Thy love to tell, Thy praise to show.” --_Havergal._ The work of evangelization went on side by side with that of the teaching of the children. From the first we established regular religious services, preaching and prayer-meeting, and, in time, class-meeting. Alternately with Rev. Edward White,[4] superintendent of the Mission, I visited the different points on the east coast of Vancouver Island, from Comox to Victoria, calling at Chemainus, Salt Spring Island, Cowichan, Saanich, and many other points. [Illustration: INDIAN HOUSES, WITH GROUP OF HEATHEN NATIVES.] Numbers of the poor heathen were little by little led to give heed to the message of truth and abandon their old ways of superstition and sin. Still we felt that the education of these people would not be complete unless they were taught habits of order and industry. Their old houses and their surroundings were wretchedly filthy and disorderly, and little calculated to help them in their efforts to rise. We must set them the example in improving the surroundings of the little church and the mission house, which had been built adjoining the church. Hence we commenced to clear off the stumps and roots from the church lot, and made it ready for cultivation. I took the boys and men and went to the woods and got out posts and rails and pickets, and thus showed them how to fence and cultivate a garden. The old heathen house, from its very character, was the hot-bed of vice. Fancy a great barn-like building, sometimes one hundred feet long by thirty wide, made of split cedar boards fastened together with poles and withes and strips of strong bark, and occupied by as many as a dozen families, only separated from each other by low partitions. Picture such a building, with no floor other than the ground, no entrance for light except the door, when open, and the cracks in the walls and the roof. Around the inside of such a building were ranged the beds, built up on rude platforms. In the corners were piles of mats and fishing-tackle and rubbish. Each family had their own fire, and these were built all along through the house, the smoke circulating generally through the building and finally finding its way out as best it could by cracks and other openings. Under the bunks and overhead and hanging from the poles were the family stores of dried fish and berries. In the midst were many miserable dogs and cats, and, later, chickens as well. This picture multiplied a dozen or more times, according to the population, went to make up the “rancheree,” as the Indian village was sometimes called. Is it any wonder that disease and vice flourished under such favorable surroundings?