The Blankets Were Not To Wear, But To Keep As Money, For
The Almighty Dollar Of These Tribes Is A Hudson's Bay Blanket.
The
wind died away soon after we met, and as the two canoes glided slowly
side by side, the Hoonas made minute inquiries as to who we were and
what we were doing so far north.
Mr. Young's object in meeting the
Indians as a missionary they could in part understand, but mine in
searching for rocks and glaciers seemed past comprehension, and they
asked our Indians whether gold-mines might not be the main object.
They remembered, however, that I had visited their Glacier Bay
ice-mountains a year ago, and seemed to think there might be, after
all, some mysterious interest about them of which they were ignorant.
Toward the middle of the afternoon they engaged our crew in a race.
We pushed a little way ahead for a time, but, though possessing a
considerable advantage, as it would seem, in our long oars, they at
length overtook us and kept up until after dark, when we camped
together in the rain on the bank of a salmon-stream among dripping
grass and bushes some twenty-five miles beyond Cape Fanshawe.
These cold northern waters are at times about as brilliantly
phosphorescent as those of the warm South, and so they were this
evening in the rain and darkness, with the temperature of the water
at forty-nine degrees, the air fifty-one. Every stroke of the oar
made a vivid surge of white light, and the canoes left shining tracks.
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