He Then Introduced His Three Children, One A Naked Lad
Five Or Six Years Old Who, As He Fondly Assured Us, Would Soon Be A
Chief, And Later To His Wife, An Intelligent-Looking Woman Of Whom He
Seemed Proud.
When we arrived she was out at the foot of the cascade
mountain gathering salmon-berries.
She came in dripping and loaded. A
few of the fine berries saved for the children she presented, proudly
and fondly beginning with the youngest, whose only clothing was a
nose-ring and a string of beads. She was lightly appareled in a
cotton gown and bit of blanket, thoroughly bedraggled, but after
unloading her berries she retired with a dry calico gown around the
corner of a rock and soon returned fresh as a daisy and with becoming
dignity took her place by the fireside. Soon two other berry-laden
women came in, seemingly enjoying the rain like the bushes and trees.
They put on little clothing so that they may be the more easily
dried, and as for the children, a thin shirt of sheeting is the most
they encumber themselves with, and get wet and half dry without
seeming to notice it while we shiver with two or three dry coats.
They seem to prefer being naked. The men also wear but little in wet
weather. When they go out for all day they put on a single blanket,
but in choring around camp, getting firewood, cooking, or looking
after their precious canvas, they seldom wear anything, braving wind
and rain in utter nakedness to avoid the bother of drying clothes. It
is a rare sight to see the children bringing in big chunks of
firewood on their shoulders, balancing in crossing boulders with
firmly set bow-legs and bulging back muscles.
We gave Ka-hood-oo-shough, the old chief, some tobacco and rice and
coffee, and pitched our tent near his hut among tall grass. Soon
after our arrival the Taylor Bay sub-chief came in from the opposite
direction from ours, telling us that he came through a cut-off
passage not on our chart. As stated above, we took pains to
conciliate him and soothe his hurt feelings. Our words and gifts, he
said, had warmed his sore heart and made him glad and comfortable.
The view down the bay among the islands was, I thought, the finest of
this kind of scenery that I had yet observed.
The weather continued cold and rainy. Nevertheless Mr. Young and I
and our crew, together with one of the Hoonas, an old man who acted
as guide, left camp to explore one of the upper arms of the bay,
where we were told there was a large glacier. We managed to push the
canoe several miles up the stream that drains the glacier to a point
where the swift current was divided among rocks and the banks were
overhung with alders and willows. I left the canoe and pushed up the
right bank past a magnificent waterfall some twelve hundred feet
high, and over the shoulder of a mountain, until I secured a good
view of the lower part of the glacier.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 134 of 163
Words from 70040 to 70572
of 85542