[BURWASH] GIFT TO A NATION 13 
this letter we gather two important facts:—First, that the Mission 
schools generally were acquainted with and had tested the syllabic 
system, with such results that Mr. Hurlburt anticipated from them a 
favourable verdict. This is confirmed by testimonies in its favour 
from such eminent Cree scholars as Pére Lacombe and Bishop Horden. 
Bishop Horden about this time published a little book setting forth 
Mr. Evans’ Syllabie system with suggested additions. Again Mr. Hurl- 
burt’s letter shows that already that movement had commenced which 
extended the knowledge and use of the new writing far beyond the 
reach either of missions or mission schools by its appeal to the interest 
and ambition of the native mind. The natives sought this new learning. 
They found its attainment easy. They began to use it for correspond- 
ence. They soon created a post office of their own by blazing a tree 
and writing on the white surface or leaving a birch bark communica- 
tion under a few stones with a pealed rod set up to attract attention. 
And thus, as well as by printed books, the knowledge of this new 
writing was rapidly becoming general among them, and this fact alone 
was sufficient to decide the question of future publication. From this 
date, 2. e., 1860 onward, we find all the missions, Catholic, Anglican 
and Methodist, using the new character and the British and Foreign 
Bible Society in London in 1861, rectifying the mistake made by its 
auxiliary in Toronto in 1836, by issuing the whole Bible in this Syllabie 
character. Thus in twenty years from 1841 to 1861 this new writing 
had won its way through all the Algonquin tribes of the North West. 
But it had at the same time given a new stimulus to the work of transla- 
tion and printing. It is only to a people who can read, that books can 
be useful. To teach the Indian to read his own language by the use 
of the Roman alphabet is a more tedious and difficult task than to 
teach him the English. This was Evans’ experience in Ontario, and 
has led largely to the adoption of the English instead of the Indian 
language as a means of instruction in the Mission schools, with the 
result that even the Bible has never been translated in all its books into 
Ojibway, and there has never been a large and pressing demand for 
books in that language. On the other hand, among the Algonquins of 
the West the introduction of the new writing speedily created a demand 
for books in their own language, and Mr. Evans anticipated such a 
demand from the very beginning of his work. In the East he had been 
himself a translator as soon as he had sufficiently mastered the language. 
The knowledge thus acquired was useful in gaining a mastery of the 
new speech with which he must now deal. In the task of mastering 
the language and making translations he was at first assisted by officers 
of the Hudson Bay Company, Mr. and Mrs. Ross of Norway House, Mr. 
and Mrs. McKay of Beaver Creek House, and probably. others. But 
