This Disgust, However, Was
Not Noticed, As The Rest Of The Company Did Full Justice To The
Precious Tallow And Smacked Their Lips Over It As A Great Delicacy.
A
lot of potatoes about the size of walnuts, boiled and peeled and
added to a potful of salmon, made a savory stew that all seemed to
relish.
An old, cross-looking, wrinkled crone presided at the
steaming chowder-pot, and as she peeled the potatoes with her fingers
she, at short intervals, quickly thrust one of the best into the
mouth of a little wild-eyed girl that crouched beside her, a spark of
natural love which charmed her withered face and made all the big
gloomy house shine. In honor of our visit, our host put on a genuine
white shirt. His wife also dressed in her best and put a pair of
dainty trousers on her two-year-old boy, who seemed to be the pet and
favorite of the large family and indeed of the whole village. Toward
evening messengers were sent through the village to call everybody to
a meeting. Mr. Young delivered the usual missionary sermon and I also
was called on to say something. Then the chief arose and made an
eloquent reply, thanking us for our good words and for the hopes we
had inspired of obtaining a teacher for their children. In
particular, he said, he wanted to hear all we could tell him about
God.
This village was an offshoot of a larger one, ten miles to the north,
called Killisnoo. Under the prevailing patriarchal form of government
each tribe is divided into comparatively few families; and because of
quarrels, the chief of this branch moved his people to this little
bay, where the beach offered a good landing for canoes. A stream
which enters it yields abundance of salmon, while in the adjacent
woods and mountains berries, deer, and wild goats abound.
"Here," he said, "we enjoy peace and plenty; all we lack is a church
and a school, particularly a school for the children." His dwelling
so much with benevolent aspect on the children of the tribe showed, I
think, that he truly loved them and had a right intelligent insight
concerning their welfare. We spent the night under his roof, the
first we had ever spent with Indians, and I never felt more at home.
The loving kindness bestowed on the little ones made the house glow.
Next morning, with the hearty good wishes of our Hootsenoo friends,
and encouraged by the gentle weather, we sailed gladly up the coast,
hoping soon to see the Chilcat glaciers in their glory. The rock
hereabouts is mostly a beautiful blue marble, waveworn into a
multitude of small coves and ledges. Fine sections were thus revealed
along the shore, which with their colors, brightened with showers and
late-blooming leaves and flowers, beguiled the weariness of the way.
The shingle in front of these marble cliffs is also mostly marble,
well polished and rounded and mixed with a small percentage of
glacier-borne slate and granite erratics.
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