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CHAPTER IX

THE BISHOP OF CALEDONIA

The Right Rev. W. Ridley, D.D.

AMONG THE INDIANS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA—EFFORTS TO OVERCOME RACE HATRED.

    “It seems to me there are other men in other lands, yearning and thoughtful.
. . . . . . . . .
    “And it seems to me, if I could know those men, I should
become attached to them, as I do to men in my own lands.
    “O, I know we should be brethren and lovers;
    I know I should be happy with them.”—Walt Whitman.

 

Disastrous Fire at Metlakathla—Bishop loses His Home while Journeying to Alaska Goldfields—Valuable MSS. destroyed—Early Life—At Peshawur and Afghanistan—Ministering to Wounded and Prisoners in Franco-German War—Crossing Battlefield after Sedan—Called to Caledonia—Bishop's Wonderful Indians—Eight Months without a Mail—Dealing with Medicine Men—Five Nationalities at Communion Table: Never met before but to fight—Race Hatred—Loyalty of Indians to Mission Staff—Bishop's Queer Occupations—Columbia's Mineral Wealth—A Wolf Story.

“I am a homeless wanderer,” the Bishop of Caledonia was heard to observe during his recent visit to this country. To the uninitiated the observation seemed a strange one, savouring more of jest than of sincerity; but the friends of the Bishop, knowing of the unhappy ordeal through which he had passed,