[BURWASH] GIFT TO A NATION 19 
besides work for the Blackfeet Indians and language. These numerous 
publications by the representatives of the three great Missionary Socie- 
ties operating in the country between Hudson’s Bay and the Mountains 
are all proof of the widespread ability to read and make use of the books 
on the part of the tribes occupying this region. Mr. Taylor, American 
Consul at Winnipeg, writes to the Manitoba Free Press: ‘ All accounts 
represent the diffusion of the Syllabic characters among the Indian 
Camps of the vast interior occupied by the Cree tribe as extraordinary. 
Parties descending rivers would exchange messages by inscriptions 
on banks or bars of the stream and its acquisition was only the labour 
of a few hours.” What Mr. Taylor says of the Crees is equally true 
of the tribes from Lake Winnipeg to the head waters of the Ottawa. 
The Syllabic character has become with them a common means of 
correspondence. Nor have we even yet reached the limit of the ex- 
tension of this work. Through the labour of Archdeacon Macdonald 
and others it is bringing the Bible and other books of instruction to the 
tribes quite on the shores of the Arctic Ocean including some tribes of 
the Eskimo. Our Canadian Bible Society is to-day sending Bibles, 
or portions of the Bible, in this character not only to the East and West 
Crees, but to the Chippewayans on their northern border, to the Slave 
tribes on’ the lake of that name, to the Tinnes on the lower Mackenzie, 
and to the Eskimo in Baffin’s land. And this does not include tribes 
reached by Pére Lacombe and other missionaries of the Catholic Church 
and still other tribes for whom no literature has been provided but who 
have learned to use the writing for their correspondence or record. In 
fact the use of writing has from the beginning preceded the production 
of printed books. It has been because the natives were able to read 
that books in this character have been provided for them. 
Thus far the literature called forth in this new writing has been 
borrowed. As an English speaking people we cannot call this a fault, 
for the beginnings of literature among our own Anglo Saxon ancestors 
were also borrowed and from the very same source. Then followed 
chronicles, simple records of past or of passing events and laws, and it 
was long before a Chaucer gave us what we could call an English classic. 
And even of the Classic Elizabethan age the product which more than 
anything else has influenced our thought, literature and life is the 
English Bible, beginning with Tyndale and Coverdale and culminating 
in the authorized version of which we are still so proud. That a people 
can adopt and make completely their own the product of a long past 
age and an entirely diverse civilization gives at least promise of power 
which may at some time vindicate the claim to originality. But this 
cannot be done in a day. It took the growth of six hundred years to 
bring the Anglo Saxon race to the zenith of their intellectual power. 
