I had some conversation with the clergyman after service: he is employed by the "New England Society," has been for a long time among the Indians, and knows them well: he has a better opinion of them and of their capacity for acquiring domestic and industrious habits, than most white men to whom I have spoken upon the subject have expressed. The society support a school in the village, where about forty children are boarded, educated, and instructed in trades; and they learn, Mr. N. says, as fast as Europeans: as yet, however, they are not fit to be trusted in making bargains with the whites, nor can they at all compete in matters of business with them: much of their original grant has been trafficked away to settlers, at prices wholly inadequate; and, though such transactions are altogether illegal, they have been overlooked so long that it is now impossible to annul them. A superintendent lives close to the village, who is paid by Government for the express purpose of protecting the Indian interests and managing their affairs; yet encroachments upon their rights are still perpetually made, which, however advantageous they may appear to a political economist, are neither reconcilable with equity nor with the real wishes and intentions of Government. Mr. N. is by no means without hopes that in a generation or two these Indians may become quite civilised: they are giving up their wandering habits, and settling rapidly upon farms throughout their territory; and, in consequence, probably, of this change in their mode of life, the decrease in their numbers, which threatened a complete extinction of the tribe, has ceased of late years: if it turn out as he expects, this will form the sole exception to the general law which affects their people. They are very much attached (as well they may be) to the British Government; and in 1837 turned out under their chiefs to the number of 500, and offered their services to it: they wished to attack Navy Island in their canoes, but those who were in command thought the enterprise too hazardous. The chiefs (whose office is, as among the ancient Gothic nations, partly hereditary and partly elective, _i.e._ ordinarily transmitted from father to son, but liable to be transferred in cases of incapacity) have still a good deal of authority among them, but, as it is of course not recognised by law, they are gradually losing it; in fact, the race is assimilating itself here far more than anywhere else to the habits and manners of the surrounding Europeans, while at the same time there is perhaps hardly any settlement where the red blood is preserved with less mixture. 42. THE POSITION OF THE GOVERNOR (1854). =Source.=--Lord Elgin to the Colonial Secretary, Sir George Grey, 18th December, 1854: Elgin's _Letters and Journals_. London, 1872.