idge, 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.

In this view, my memory carries me back to a very happy day, April 1,
1855, when the good sailing ship _Margius of Bute_, chartered by
the Hudson's Bay Company to bring its freight and passengers,
including myself as chaplain and district minister of Victoria, my
wife and servants, to this far-off island, calling at Honolulu by the
way, cast anchor off Clover Point, so terminating a voyage of about
six months' duration from London. The next day, having moved to the
inner harbor, we made our first acquaintance with several Victorians,
who came on board to give us and our _compagnons de voyage_ a
cordial welcome. That same morning we received an invitation from His
Excellency Governor Douglas to luncheon, who also sent a boat to take
us ashore; the boatman was good John Spelde, concerning whom I
curiously remember my wife telling me that her domestic, Mary Ann
Herbert, referred to him later in the day as the "man with the
fingers," he having lost three of those members in the firing of a
salute on some ceremonial occasion.

After the luncheon, never to be forgotten for the cordial welcome of
His Excellency and Mrs. Douglas and their interesting family, not to
say the delicious salmon and other delicacies after shipboard fare,
we were conducted to the Fort, which was to be our temporary abode
till the Parsonage, which then began to be built, should be finished.
I have no recollection of the impression produced on my mind as we
entered by the south gate the large square fenced in by tall
palisades and frowning bastions, only I am certain I had no fear of
being imprisoned in this strongho