Nearly Every Tree That I Saw In A
Long Walk Was More Or Less Marked By The Knives And Axes Of The
Indians, Who Use The Bark For Matting, For Covering House-Roofs, And
Making Temporary Portable Huts.
For this last purpose sections five
or six feet long and two or three wide are pressed flat and secured
from warping or splitting by binding them with thin strips of wood at
the end.
These they carry about with them in their canoes, and in a
few minutes they can be put together against slim poles and made into
a rainproof hut. Every paddle that I have seen along the coast is
made of the light, tough, handsome yellow wood of this tree. It is a
tree of moderately rapid growth and usually chooses ground that is
rather boggy and mossy. Whether its network of roots makes the bog or
not, I am unable as yet to say.
Three glaciers on the opposite side of the canal were in sight,
descending nearly to sea-level, and many smaller ones that melt a
little below timber-line. While I was sketching these, a canoe hove
in sight, coming on at a flying rate of speed before the wind. The
owners, eager for news, paid us a visit. They proved to be Hoonas, a
man, his wife, and four children, on their way home from Chilcat. The
man was sitting in the stern steering and holding a sleeping child in
his arms. Another lay asleep at his feet.
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