VIEW OF VICTORIA, VANCOUVER ISLAND, JULY 1858
Starting from the corner of Fort and Government Streets, with a radius of three quarters of a mile, the town site covers two-thirds of a circle, stretching round the harbour. The streets in general are sixty feet wide, and cross each other at right angles, and from the sloping and undulating character of the ground there is no point from which the city does not look interesting. Streets in which two or three years since the pedestrian sank knee-deep in mire, are now macadamised, and provided with solid wooden footpaths.

Mathew Macfic, Vancouver Island and British Columbia, 1865