150 Our North Land. 



Within the high picket fence there are a large number of graves, 

 most of them marked by tomb-stones, but there is nothing particu- 

 larly interesting in the inscriptions on them. Two are written in 

 Cree, and attract attention on that account. In speaking with the 

 doctor I learned that York has not of late been considered very 

 healthy. There were twenty-five deaths last year, fourteen of them 

 in a single month. The greater number were taken off by an epi- 

 demic of bronchitis. Last year, however, was an exceptional ex- 

 perience in this respect : two Indian children died of cholera. 



Passing from the grave-yard I visited the little church within 

 the palisade, where the white people attend service under the 

 ministry of the Rev. George Winter of the Church of England. It 

 is a neat little structure, much like that at Churchill, but about 

 double the size. It contains a melodeon, and is otherwise well 

 appointed. Next to it is the school-house, just outside of the pali- 

 sade. It is a neat, clean, well kept building, where in the summer 

 months school is kept up from eight o'clock in the morning until 

 about five o'clock in the evening. There are, including white and 

 Cree, about one hundred and twenty -five children. These have but 

 one teacher, the Rev. Mr. Winter, but are taught separately. 



The white children attend school, and English branches are 

 taught from eight to half -past ten in the forenoon. From that hour 

 until five in the evening the Indian children are taught in Cree, to 

 read and write, and to apply the rudiments of arithmetic. Great 

 progress has been made in the education of the Cree Indians. The 

 same syllabic characters are used as in teaching Chippewayan. A 

 number of useful text-books have been printed, and, through the in- 

 defatigable efforts of Mrs. Mason, the mother of Mrs. Fortesque, wife 

 of Chief Factor Fortesque, the entire Old and New Testaments have 

 been printed and published in the Cree language. I look upon it 

 as a great credit to the efforts put forth at York Factory, on behalf 

 of education, that almost all the Indians there, who are of sufficient 

 age, can read and write with ease in their own language. I visited 

 several of the Indian houses close by, and found copies of the Cree 

 bible in all of them. As a test of their knowledge of the Scriptures, 

 and their ability to read and understand them through the medium 



