in most friendly concert, they gave the
Spanish-English name of Quadra and
Vancouver Island. Signor Quadra was the
representative of Spain at Nootka with whom
Captain Vancouver was to treat upon the
subject of the restitution and surrender.

It is not on Vancouver's Island that gold has
been found; but, except a little upon
Charlotte's Island, to the north of it, the yield is
beside the rivers of the mainland opposite.
The formation of the mountain chains is
probably throughout similar to that of the
gold-producing rocks of California. The
new diggings are, in fact, only on a more
northern part of the same grand range on
which the Californians depend for treasure.
The ports of the new gold country, and the
homes of those miners who settle on the spot
and invest earnings in trade and agriculture,
will be on Vancouver's Island. The shore of
the mainland in the Gulf of Georgia is rugged
and dangerous, and of the country in the
interior, not much is known. It was first
approached by the British fur-traders over
the Rocky Mountains, when Mr. Simon Frazer,
partner in the north-west company,
established a trading-fort on Frazer Lake, and
gave his name to Frazer River. This is the
gold-bearing river, now sought by
adventurers. It falls into the sea opposite the
southern or colonised end of Vancouver's
Island, and only a few miles short of the
boundary of our American possessions.

The Thompson River, flowing from the
Rocky Mountains, joins the Frazer about a
hundred and fifty miles before it reaches the
coast. Along the course of this river also gold
is to be found, and it is said to be most
abundant on each river above the point of
confluence. The district on the Thompson
River is said to be one of the finest countries
in the world.

Vancouver's Island was granted to the
Hudson's Bay Company in eighteen hundred
and forty-nine, and certain conditions of
colonisation were laid down. The grant was
revocable at the end of eleven years, now
soon to expire, and it is already officially
announced that it will be revoked. Under the
present constitution, the governor of the
island is appointed by the Crown. He has a
council of seven members, and is authorised
to call assemblies, and to form electoral
districts for the securing to the island of a
representative government upon the English
system. The governor, Mr. Douglas, who is
also the chief factor of the Hudson's Bay
Company, and in honour of whom a great
coal-seam has been named, is declared by
every report from the new gold district, to
perform his duty with a wise discretion, and
the Hudson's Bay Company is also reported
to be making to itself friends of Mammon by
accepting liberally, and with a good grace, the
new situation in which it is placed. But it is
not to be forgotten that, after nine years
possession of a colony, that apart from its
newly-discovered source of wealth is full of
promise to the settler, the whole settlement
consisted, till a few months since, of a
palisaded enclosure for the stores within
which the chief clerks and traders live, fifty
or sixty log huts, and a few farms in their
vicinity scattered across seven square miles of
open land and ten of woodland. The trade
hitherto has been with San Francisco in coal,
timber, and the produce of the fisheries. On
the west-coast there is little to invite the
settler, and the mountainous interior is almost
unknown, but on the west and south coast
there is plenty of good land. The native
population is supposed to consist of about
seventeen thousand Indians, of many of
whom the lands have been bought by the
Hudson's Bay Company for the British
government, on payment of a blanket to each
head of a family: in all, about one thousand
blankets for two thousand square miles of
soil.

An interesting description of Vancouver's
Island, communicated by Colonel Colquhoun
Grant to the Geographical Society, contains
this suggestion of the general aspect of the
natives, whom he declares to be cruel,
bloodthirsty, treacherous, and cowardly. "What-
ever difference there may be in the languages
of the various tribes of Vancouver's Island,
and however great their hostility one towards
another, in one characteristic they almost
universally agree, and that is in the general
filthiness of their habits. No pigsty could
present a more filthy aspect than that afforded
by the exterior of an Indian village. They
are always situated close to the water-side,
either on a harbour or some sheltered nook of
the sea-coast, or, as in the case of the Cowitchins,
on the banks of a river. They are
generally placed on a high bank, so as to be
difficult of access to an attacking party; and
their position is not unfrequently chosen,
whether by chance or from taste, in the most
picturesque sites. A few round holes, or
sometimes low oblong holes or apertures in
the palisades, generally not above three feet
high, constitute their means of egress and
ingress. They seldom move about much on
terra firma, but, after creeping out of their
holes, at once launch their canoes and embark
therein. A pile of cockle-shells, oyster-shells,
fish-bones, pieces of putrid meat, old mats,
pieces of rag, and dirt and filth of every
description, the accumulation of generations,
is seen in the front of every village; half-
starved curs, cowardly and snappish, prowl
about, occasionally howling; and the savage
himself, notwithstanding his constant
exposure to the weather, is but a moving mass
covered with vermin of every description.
Generally speaking, when not engaged in
fishing, they pass the greater portion of their
time in a sort of torpid state, lying inside
beside their fires. The only people to be seen
outside are a few old women, cleaning their
wool or making baskets. Sometimes a group