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- 248 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
in the country. As it was at first unfenced, my wife was often afraid at noises. One night we heard a scraping, and she was sure that someone was breaking into the house. I tried to persuade her that burglars did not announce their presence in that open fashion. However, to reassure her, I reconnoitred, and found it was only an old sow rubbing her back against an old shed nearby.
The Parsonage ground was all wild, but the soil good, and as it was my future home, the task of trying to make it a worthy appendage of the district church was a pleasant one. My servant, James Ravey, was a good gardener, but rather more inclined to the useful than the ornamental. When my wife wanted to enlist his interest in flower gardening, he remarked that the flowers he had liked best were cauliflowers. However, she had her way, he nothing loath. Dr. Helmcken liberally supplied us with a variety of flowers from his well-kept garden, among which I remember daisies?not the wee, modest, crimson-tipped flowers, but variegated beauties, gorgeous through ages of culture. There was not a wild daisy in the country; but now they are spreading everywhere, as if when left alone they preferred their natural state. The Governor also took a kindly interest in the work, offering valuable hints as to the planting of fruit trees, etc. Mr. Work, of Hill-side, also sent me a fine lot of young ornamental trees, which flourished well. A good gardening book was loaned me of the company?a long loan, I think, as I have possession of it still.
So the garden, though nothing to boast of in the artistic point of view, yielded abundance of fruit.
But if it were pleasant to get into the Parsonage, it by no means follows that life in the Fort was dreary;
BISHOP CRIDGE'S CHRISTMAS STORY 249
on the contrary, some of our happiest hours were spent there. Besides my satisfaction with the present and hopes for the future, coupled with the companionship of one who had full possession of my heart and life, we were forming and cementing friendships which were to endure for many a long year. Not only this?there were pleasant musical and social evenings. There were voices and instruments; Mrs. Mouat, with the piano brought out with her from England ; Mr. Augustus Pemberton, lately arrived from Ireland with his flute; Mr. B. W. Pearse, with his violin; I did what I could with my 'cello, the instrument my father had and played when a boy.
It was also during those early days that we, my wife and I, had our first experience of the Governor's delightful riding parties on Saturday afternoons, when the officers of the Company and friends, their wives and daughters, rode merrily across the country unimpeded by gates or bars. I remember the first, when my wife, who did not ride, had her first drive in the Governor's carriage?a homemade vehicle, without springs, as be-fitted the times and the place; our destination was Cadboro Bay, which we reached by a trail which, beginning near the Fort, lay all through open country without a house or field till we arrived at the Company's farm at that beautiful spot; and though I cannot remember what we did there on that day, I remember well that on many another day I had to send man and horse there for meat for my family.
On another occasion our ride lying along the Saanich trail, when near the North Dairy farm the Governor called a halt; a man stepped out and fired up into a tree and a grouse fell dead; he reloaded and fired up into the same tree again and another grouse fell dead.
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