course by a light from one of the houses on the shore instead of the two red range lights, ran the schooner up on the shore near Tignish Harbor where it was lost after breaking up. Captain Paul Costain lived many of his later years with the Edward Lewis family of Fortune Cove, Prince Edward Island and his last years with his two sisters, Mary (Mrs. Job Costain), and Margaret A. (Mrs. John Gouldrup) in Miminegash on the Palmer Road. He died in December, 1929 and is buried in the Miminegash United Church Cemetery. At the age of ninety years, Captain Wilbert McInnis relives those romantic years of a period in Prince Edward Island history which can only be imagined by most of his listeners. Possessed with an excellent memory, Wib McInnis recalled the precise details about the people, schooners, dates, and places mentioned in this ar- ticle as if the events had taken place last week. He has made our lives richer by allowing us to share a period of our heritage which otherwise might have been forgotten. 9. METHODISTS ATTEMPT TO ORGANIZE AND UNIFY THEIR CHURCH In 1855, the districts of New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, were organized into a Wesleyan Conference, affiliated with the British Conference, under the name, “The Conference of Eastern British America.” When that Conference was created there were 70 circuits and missions; 88 ministers; 102 local preachers; 222 chapels; 393 other preaching places; 1,162 day scholars; 91,114 Sunday-school scholars; 11,136 members, and an estimated attendance of 65,690 at public worship. The formation in 1855 of the Eastern British American Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church not only reduced the annual grants received from England, but also gave more independence to the growing Canadian Conference. In 1859, Prince Edward Island became a separate District. The Methodist Church of Canada was formed in 1874 by the union of the Eastern British American Conference of Wesleyan Methodists, composed of churches from the Maritimes, Newfoundland and Bermuda, with the Wesleyan Methodist Conference of Canada consisting of churches west of New Brunswick, and the New Connexion Methodist Church of Canada, whose work was centered in Ontario. 10. METHODISTS SECURE FOR THE LAITY THEIR FULL SHARE OF PRIVILEGES IN THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH “These years of extension had awakened, in a much divided Methodism a sense of the advisability of union in both England and the colonies. The center of discus- sion was Canada, where five Methodist sects wasted their energy in vigorous, if not unseemly, rivalry. As early as 1866 the Bible Christians and the Methodist New Con- nection approached the Methodist Protestants of the United States upon the 47