VICTORIA, VANCOUVER ISLAND. 



165 



Island, where there is much to interest them.* They will find Victoria a very pretty little 

 town, with Government house, cathedral, churches and chapels, a mechanics' institute, a 

 theatre, good hotels and restaurants the latter generally in French hands. He will find 

 a curious mixture of English and American manners and customs, and a very curious 

 mixture of coinage shillings being the same as quarter-dollars, while crowns are only 

 the value of dollars (5s., against 4s. 2d.). Some years ago the island system was 

 different from that of the mainland ; on the latter, florins were equal to half-dollars 

 (which they are, nearly), while on the island they were 37| cents only (Is. 7|d.). The 

 Hudson's Bay Company, which has trading -posts throughout British Columbia, took 



THE BRITISH CAMP : SAN JUAN. 



advantage of the fact to give change for American money, on their steamers, in English 

 florins, obtaining them on the island. They thus made nearly twenty-five per cent, in their 

 transaction, besides getting paid the passenger's fare. Yet the traveller, strange to say, 

 did not lose by this, for, on landing at New Westminster, he found that what was rated 

 at a little over eighteenpence on Vancouver Island, had suddenly, after travelling only 

 seventy miles or so, increased in value to upwards of two shillings ! 



Outside Victoria there ars many pleasant drives and walks : to " The Arm," where, 

 amid a charming landscape, interspersed with pines and natural fir woods, wild flowers, and 

 mossy rocks, there is a pretty little rapid, or fall ; to Saanich, where the settlers' home- 

 steads have a semi-civilised appearance, half of the houses being of squared logs, but 



* Excepting at San Francisco, the only docks worthy of the lame on the whole Pacific coasts of America 

 are those of England's naval station at Esquimalt. 



