POSTSCRIPT. 255 



guess. Docile, clean, ready to work, and able to 

 do anything that a woman can, the universal 

 employment of them as domestic servants, at a 

 high rate of wages, proves the esteem in which they 

 are held. As cooks, I can testify of my own know- 

 ledge to their excellency. I have had experience 

 (and pretty frequent experience) of three different 

 Chinese cooks in private houses during my wan- 

 derings out West. I can honestly say that I 

 never had a cook in England fit to hold a candle 

 to any one of the three. But high rates of 

 wages will not greatly help the workman if the 

 price of the necessaries of life is so high as to 

 swallow up all he earns. In Victoria food is un- 

 deniably cheap ; that is to say, bread and meat, 

 the absolute necessaries of life, with fish and fruit, 

 are cheap ; but groceries, coal, and clothing are 

 dear. I think my wife computed that living in 

 the best way in which you can live in Victoria 

 would cost about as much as such living would 

 do in England. Thanks to a friend before re- 

 ferred to, I am able to give some accurate figures 

 regarding the cost of labourers' food in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Olympia, and I fancy that little dif- 

 ference would be found to exist between the cost 

 of living there and in Vancouver Island. A 

 farm-labourer's board is calculated at 35 cents 

 per diem (say Is. 5^d.), while in the lumberers* 



