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- 6 A SHORT AUTOBIOGRAPHY
on account of his being a Roman Catholic. He would not take no for an answer, but later on followed her to England and offered himself a second time without effect. Shortly after this she and my father were married, and on the advice of Rowland Hill, his cousin (Sir Rowland Hill), he took his young bride to Australia. Rowland Hill, being his father's trustee under his will, paid my father his share, with which he took a stock of goods and started business in Sydney.
In 1849 we left Sydney, where I was born, for San Francisco?father, mother, my brother Rowland and myself, in the ship Victoria. This vessel my father afterwards purchased and sent to Alberni, or Sooke, for a load of lumber for England, when we all were going with her. The vessel never came back, having been wrecked somewhere near where all the wrecks have since taken place, on the west coast of this island. My father was ruined, for there was no insurance, so he had to start life anew. He came north to Victoria in 1858, where he entered into business until appointed Government Agent at Nanaimo, where he served some years, dying at the advanced age of seventy-six. My mother died in 1863, and at the present writing, in addition to myself, there is one brother in Victoria?Rowland--and another brother, Arthur, in London, England.
The author has completed his fifty-three years in this fair city.
DINGLEY DELL,
December 20th, 1911.CONTENTS
CHAPTER. PAGE
I. The Experiences of a British Boy in San
Francisco in the Early Fifties - 11
II. Theatrical Memories - - . 20
III. My Boyhood Days in Victoria 26
IV. Victoria's First Directory - ? - 38
V. Some Recolections of Victoria by One who
Was There in the Sixties - 57
VI. A Little More Street History 68
VII. The Victoria Gazette, 1858 - 73
VIII. Victoria in 1859-1860 84
IX. Fires and Firemen - 92
X. A Siberian Mammoth 100 I
XI. Mrs. Edwin Donald, Hon. Wymond Hamley,
Hon. G. A. Walkem 109
XII. The Consecration of the Iron Church - 115
XIII. The Iron Church Again - - - - 121
XIV. Its Departed Glories, or Esquimalt, Then
and Now ' 124
XV. Old Quadra Street Cemetery - 129
XVI. Pioneer Society's Banquet - - - 144
XVII. Victoria District Church - - 149
XVIII. Christmas in Pioneer Days - 153
XIX. The Queen's Birthday Forty Years Ago 159
XX. Evolution of the Victoria Post Office - - 166
XXI. Fifty Years Ago - - - . - 170
XXII. Forty Years Ago - - - 174
XXIII. The Late Governor Johnson - 178
XXIV. A Trip to a Coral Island 181
XXV. A Victorian's Visit to Southern California 183
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