property the Company have no claim to it which will stand the test of law or equity. It is to all intents and purposes in the same condition as the lands of Cowichan, Nootka or Cape Scott; and the funds derived from the sale as justly belong to the Territorial revenues of the Colony. Taking then the townsite to be like other lands, subject to the conditions of the grant, (which we will hereafter prove) we find that one of the conditions says: 'That the said Company shall (for the purposes of colonization) dispose of all lands hereby granted to them, at a reasonable price, except as much thereof as may be required for public purposes.' The streets are used for public purposes--and for that reason the Company have no more right to them, nor the trees, than anyone else. Their act of felling trees on the public streets, and their intimation, deserves the strongest mark of public censure--and merits the attention of the proper authorities. "Besides if our connection with the Hudson's Bay Company is not speedily ended we may expect many more such trumped-up claims as their claim to the streets, which they will want us to pay for." I think my pioneer friends will now agree with me that enough evidence has been furnished to prove my contention that View Street was originally intended to reach from Wharf Street to Cook Street, and farther if necessary. CHAPTER XXXVII. BISHOP CRIDGE'S CHRISTMAS STORY. Some years ago the _Colonist_ requested several "old timers" to write for the Christmas number a description of Christmas as it was observed in the early days in this city. The following were those who wrote: The Venerable Bishop Cridge, Hon. Dr. Helmcken, Hon. D. W. Higgins, and the author of these reminiscences. I was so much interested myself in these stories (as I am in all Christmas stories), I decided, with the consent of the writers, to reproduce them in my book; not only as interesting, but as very instructive, describing, as they do, life in the pioneer days of the colony. [Portrait: Rev. Edward Cridge, 1859.] In essaying to write an account of my first Christmas at Victoria, I am met at the beginning with the inconvenient fact that I kept no journal, my only written records relating simply to my ministry or to things purely personal or domestic. What I write, therefore, is not a history, seeking materials from any and all sources of information, nor a biography, dealing with the writer's proper business in life, but a narrative of incidents occurring to memory, interesting to the reader only because they refer to the early history of our beloved city. Another thing has to be considered, namely, that as, after fifty years and more, the remembered incidents of a particular day or season would occupy but a few lines to relate, such a season may properly be regarded in relation to things going before and things following after.