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- 32 REMINISCENCES OF OLD VICTORIA
going home, or it might be for some long drive, usually to Cadboro Bay. Mr. Burr would remonstrate with him, but generally gave way, and off he went. As he and I got intimate he wanted me to go with him on these expeditions, and often at the unseemly hours of two or three o'clock, during school.
One day he got up suddenly in his seat and said : " Mr. Burr, I am going home and I want Fawcett to go with me; that will be all right, won't it?"
" Now, Master James," said Mr. Burr, " I cannot al-low this; I must protest against this going away during school hours. If His Excellency only knew, what would he say ?"
" Oh, that will be all right, Mr. Burr."
" No, no, James, it is not all right, and as for Fawcett going with you I cannot allow it, Master James ; heed me or I must have a word with Sir James about
you.,, All this time James was standing up at his desk with his riding-whip in his hand, and making signs for me to follow, which I proceeded to do, the master protesting all the time. I got my reward next day, but not as bad as I would have got had not good Mrs. Burr come to my rescue. We drove to Upland Farm, then the home of City Clerk Leigh and his family, at Cadboro Bay. Mrs. Leigh was always good to James and I on these visits to the farm, getting us the best to eat and plenty of fresh milk to drink. By some understanding between Sir James and Mr. Burr we continued these afternoon drives, and it may be imagined how we boys enjoyed them. We continued friends to the last, and years after I worked like a beaver when he was elected a member of the Legislature for Victoria City. He was godfather to my eldest son, who was named after him. I have still
MY BOYHOOD DAYS IN VICTORIA 33
a handsome book given me by Sir James at the last break-up of school before I left. I
We now and then hear complaints by prudish people of the boys bathing on Victoria Arm, on Deadman's Island and elsewhere without a full bathing suit. What would they say to the boys of my time bathing in Nature's suit only, and that on the waterfront from James Bay bridge all around to the Hudson's Bay Company's wharf ? We bathed there at all times, and to our heart's content, and never was exception taken to it by the authorities, or in fact by anyone. Use is second nature, and I suppose that accounted for it.
Have any of my readers ever seen Deadman's Island (the island which is opposite Leigh's mill) when it was covered with trees and shrubs? Well, up these trees were corpses of Indians fastened up in trunks and cracker boxes, but mostly trunks, the bodies being doubled up to make them fit in the trunk, and then suspended like Mahomet's coffin between heaven and earth. There were also some Indians buried in the shallow soil and surrounded by fences, and again boxes of corpses were piled one on top of the other. This island was a favorite place of the school boys as a rendezvous for swimming, and many a summer's afternoon and Saturday have I spent there in the good old days gone by.
I shall now relate an incident of one of these expeditions to the island by myself and three others. I can recollect the names of only two members of the expedition of that Saturday, and I might say that they were my schoolfellows of the Collegiate School, which occupied the site of Mr. Ellis's residence on Church Hill, and was afterwards burnt down. I left the Colonial School in 1860, and transferred to the Collegiate School,
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