eeping their prisoners alive for
slaves. These are numerous among some of the tribes; and many might be
obtained, without purchasing them, for religious instruction. In fact
there appear to be many points in this vast territory where there is a
prospect of establishing well-conducted missions to the great and
lasting benefit of the natives. But the object should be pursued upon a
regular and persevering system, and while the Missionary needs the
active co-operation of the resident Officer in his arduous engagement
with the Indians; no idle prejudice should ever prevent his endeavours
to civilize and fix them in the cultivation of the soil where it may be
effected.

The Russians it appears are affording religious instruction in the
establishment of schools for the education of half-caste children, with
those of the natives in their Factories on the North-west coast of
North America. A gentleman informed me that he saw, at their
Establishment at Norfolk Sound, a priest and a schoolmaster, who were
teaching the children, and instructing the natives, not as the Spanish
priests do, at Fort St. Francisco, in South America, by taking them by
force, and compelling them to go through the forms and ceremonies of
_their_ religion, but by mild persuasion and conviction; and the
report of their success in general is, that a considerable number of
savages of the Polar Regions have been converted to Christianity.[8]

[8] Since my return to England I have been favoured with the
following communication from a gentleman, who travelled in
Siberia, to promote the object of the British and Foreign Bible
Society, in the general circulation of the Scriptures; and
which-corroborates the above report. "The Russians have made many
proselytes to the Greek Church, (he observes,) from among the
natives of the North-West coast of North America, and two
different supplies of copies of the Scriptures in the Slavonian
and modern Russ languages have been forwarded to that quarter,
for the use of their settlements there, by the Russian Bible
Society."

MAY 23.--The Settlers have been very industrious in getting in their
seed corn; but the weather has been, and continues to be very cold,
with a strong north and north-easterly wind, which has cheeked
vegetation; and the woods around us still wear the dark hue of winter.
We now take a plentiful supply of sturgeon, and with the return of th