Note 38 — Chapter III

This is still true. Many years ago, when there was a threat of Indian trouble at Victoria, Sir James Douglas, famous as the first governor of British Columbia, and still more celebrated as a factor of the Hudson Bay Company, immediately allayed the rising storm by ordering a keg of treacle and a box of biscuit to be opened. Instantly the knives and muskets were tossed aside, and the irate savages fell to these homely dainties with the best of goodwill to all concerned. "Dear me! dear me! there is nothing like a little molasses," was the sage governor's remark. At the Alberni saw-mills, on the West coast, the invariable midday meal of the Indians loading lumber was coarse ship's biscuit dipped in a tin basin of the cheapest treacle, around which the mollified tribesmen squatted.