The Adventures of John Jewitt Part 1

The Adventures of John Jewitt.

by John Rodgers Jewitt.

IN MEMORY

A sad interest attaches to this little book. Although published after his death, and therefore deprived of his final revision, it was not the last work which Dr. Robert Brown did. His ma.n.u.script was actually completed many months ago, but at his own request it was returned to him to receive a last careful overhaul at his hands. This revision had been practically finished, and the MS. lay ready uppermost among the papers in his desk, where it was found after his death. Dr. Brown died on the morning of the 26th of October, 1895, working almost to his last hour.

Before the leader he had written for the _Standard_ on the evening of the 25th had come under the eyes of its readers, the hand that had penned it was cold in death. Between the evening and the morning he went home. He was only fifty-three, but "a righteous man, though he die before his time, shall be at rest."

And in one sense Dr. Brown needed rest--ay, even this last and sweetest rest of all. His life had been one of unremitting work--work well done, which the busy, hurrying world mostly heeded not, knowing naught of the hand that did it. Some twenty years ago, when I first knew him, he was a fair, stalwart Northerner, full of vigour, mirthful also, and apparently looking out on the voyage of life with the confident, joyous eye of one who felt he had strength within him to conquer. His latter days were saddened by incessant toil, performed in weakness of body and jadedness of brain, and by the feeling that his best work, the work into which he put his rich stores of knowledge, was neither recognised nor requited as it should have been.

To a sensitive man the daily wear and tear of a journalist's life in London is often murderous, always exhausting--and Dr. Brown was very sensitive. Beneath the genial exterior, which seemed to indicate a careless, light-hearted spirit, lay great depths of feeling, and a tenderness that shrank from expressing itself. The man was too proud and self-restrained to betray these depths even to those nearest and dearest to him. This was at once a n.o.bility in him and a weakness. Had he opened his heart more, he would have chafed and fretted less, little annoyances would not have become mountain loads of care. But the truth is, Dr.

Brown was not cut out for the life of an everyday journalist, either by training, habits, or disposition. The ideal post for him would have been that of a professor at some great university, where he could have had abundant leisure to pursue his favourite studies, where young men would have surrounded him and listened with delight to the outpouring of the wealth of lore with which his capacious intellect was stored. His lot was otherwise cast, and he accepted it manfully, battling with his destiny to his last hours, grimly and in silence of soul, intent only on one thing, to lift his children clear above the necessity for treading the same rough road upon which he had worn himself out.

Other and worthier hands than mine may trace, it is to be hoped, the story of his life, his expeditions in America and Greenland, and his many literary labours not only in popularising scientific subjects, with a thoroughness and attractiveness too little recognised, but in walks apart where the mult.i.tude could not judge him. My dominant feeling about him for many years has been one of regret that he should be wearing his life away so fast. He never learned to play; to be completely idle for a day even became, latterly, irksome, almost irritating, to him. His fingers itched to hold the pen, to handle a book. Although in earlier times he could enjoy a brief holiday, he ever mixed work with his pleasure; could, indeed, accept no pleasure which did not imply work somewhere close to his hand. Thus his various journeys to Morocco, ostensibly taken, at any rate the earlier of them, to escape from all kinds of work, and from the sight of the day's newspaper, ended in his becoming the foremost authority in Great Britain upon the literature, present social condition, and probable future of that peris.h.i.+ng country.

The acquisition of this knowledge was all in his day's enjoyment.

The testimony of the introduction and notes to this little book is enough to prove how thoroughly and conscientiously everything that Dr.

Brown undertook was done. The question of payment rarely entered into his calculations. Some of his very best work was done for nothing, because he loved to do it. Witness his edition of _Leo Africa.n.u.s_, prepared for the Hakluyt Society, and his innumerable memoirs to the various learned Societies of which he was a member.

Few of Dr. Brown's London friends were aware that his attainments as a scientific botanist were of the highest order. Yet in this department of science alone he had written thirty papers and reports, besides an advanced text-book of Botany (published by William Blackwood and Sons), before the summer of 1872, when he was only thirty years of age. These were entirely outside his contributions to general literature on that and other subjects, already at that date numerous; and if we add to the list the various reports, essays, memoranda contributed by him to the Royal Physical Society of Edinburgh, of which he was President, to the Royal Geographical Society, of whose Council he was a member at his death, and to numerous other bodies, as well as to scientific and popular journals, on geographical, geological, and zoological subjects, from first to last the total mounts to several hundreds. In these branches of science his heart lay always, but he laboured for his daily bread and to give to him that needed.

The portrait forming the frontispiece to this volume is from a photograph of Dr. Brown taken in 1870, just after his return from his last expedition to Greenland, and represents him much as he looked when, some years later, he first came to London, after failing to obtain the chair of Botany in Edinburgh University. That was a disappointment which he cannot be said ever to have entirely surmounted. The memory of it to some extent kept him aloof from his fellow-labourers in the world of journalism. What work he had to do he did loyally, manfully, and with the most scrupulous care; but he lived a man apart, more or less, from his first coming among us to the end. In his family circle, and where he was really known, his loss has brought a great sorrow.

A. J. W.

LONDON, _February 16, 1896_.

INTRODUCTION

Many years ago--when America was in the midst of war, when railways across the continent were but the dream of sanguine men, and when the Pacific was a faraway sea--the writer of these lines pa.s.sed part of a pleasant summer in cruising along the western sh.o.r.es of Vancouver Island. Our s.h.i.+p's company was not distinguished, for it consisted of two fur-traders and an Indian "boy," and the sloop in which the crew and pa.s.sengers sailed was so small, that, when the wind failed, and the brown folk ash.o.r.e looked less amiable and the sh.o.r.e more rugged than was desirable, we put her and ourselves beyond hail by the aid of what seamen know as a "white ash breeze." Out of one fjord we went, only to enter another so like it that there was often a difficulty in deciding by the mere appearance of the sh.o.r.e which was which. Everywhere the dense forest of Douglas fir and Menzies spruce covered the country from the water's edge to the summit of the rounded hills which here and there caught the eye in the still little known, but at that date almost entirely unexplored interior. Wherever a tree could obtain a foothold, there a tree grew, until in places their roots were at times laved by the spray. Beneath this thick clothing of heavy timber flourished an almost equally dense undergrowth of shrubs, which until then were only known to us from the specimens introduced from North-West America into the European gardens. Gay were the thickets of thimbleberry[1] and salmonberry[2] wherever the soil was rich, and for miles the ground was carpeted with the salal,[3] while the huckleberry,[4] the crab-apple,[5]

and the flowering currant[6] varied the monotony of the gloomy woods. In places the ginseng, or, as the woodmen call it, the "devil's walking-stick,"[7] with its long p.r.i.c.kly stem and palm-like head of great leaves, imparted an almost tropical aspect to scenery which, seen from the deck of our little craft, looked so like that of Southern Norway, that I have never seen the latter without recalling the outer limits of British Columbia. On the few flat spits where the sun reached, the gigantic cedars[8] and broad-leaved maples[9] lighted up the scene, while the dogwood,[10] with its large white flowers reflected in the water of some river which, after a turbulent course, had reached the sea through a placid mouth, or a Menzies arbutus,[11] whose glossy leaves and brown bark presented a more southern facies to the sombre jungles, afforded here and there a relief to the never-ending fir and pine and spruce.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DR. BROWN'S "BOY."]

A more solitary sh.o.r.e, so far as white men are concerned, it would be hard to imagine. From the day we left until the day we returned, we sighted only one sail; and from Port San Juan, where an Indian trader lived a lonely life in an often-beleaguered blockhouse, to Koskeemo Sound, where another of these voluntary exiles pa.s.sed his years among the savages, there was not a christened man, with the exception of the little settlement of lumbermen at the head of the Alberni Ca.n.a.l. For months at a time no keel ever ploughed this sea, and then too frequently it was a wars.h.i.+p sent from Victoria to chastise the tribesmen for some outrage committed on wayfaring men such as we. The floating fur-trader with whom we exchanged the courtesies of the wilderness had indeed been despitefully used. For had he not taken to himself some savage woman, who had levanted to her tribe with those miscellaneous effects which he termed "iktas"? And the Klayoquahts had stolen his boat, and the Kaoquahts his beans and his vermilion and his rice, and threatened to scuttle his schooner and stick his head on its masthead. And, moreover, to complete this tale of public pillage and private wrong, a certain chief, to whom he applied many ornate epithets, had declared that he cared not a salal-berry for all of "King George's wars.h.i.+ps." So that the conclusion of this merchant of the wilds was that, until "half the Indians were hanged, and the other half badly licked, there would be no peace on the coast for honest men such as he." Then, under a cloud of playful blasphemy, our friend sailed away.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORT SAN JUAN INDIANS.]

For if civilisation was scarce in the Western Vancouver of '63, savagedom was all-abounding. Not many hours pa.s.sed without our having dealings with the lords of the soil. It was indeed our business--or, at least, the business of the two men and the Indian "boy"--to meet with and make profit out of the barbarous folk. Hence it was seldom that we went to sleep without the din of a board village in our ears, or woke without the ancient and most fish-like smell of one being the first odour which greeted our nostrils. In almost every cove, creek, or inlet there was one of these camps, and every few miles we entered the territory of a new tribe, ruled by a rival chief, rarely on terms with his neighbour, and as often as not at war with him. More than once we had occasion to witness the gruesome evidence of this state of matters.

A war party returning from a raid on a distant hamlet would be met with, all painted in hideous colours, and with the bleeding heads of their decapitated enemies fastened to the bows of their cedar canoes, and the cowering captives, doomed to slavery, bound among the fighting men. Or, casting anchor in front of a village, we would be shown with pride a row of festering skulls stuck on poles, as proof of the military prowess of our s.h.i.+fty hosts.

These were, however, unusually unpleasant incidents. More frequently we saw little except the more lightsome traits of what was then a very primitive savage life, and the barbarous folk treated us kindly. A marriage feast might be in progress, or a great "potlatch," or merrymaking, at which the giving away of property was the princ.i.p.al feature (p. 82), might be in full blaze at the very moment we steered round the wooded point. Halibut and dog-fish were being caught in vast quant.i.ties--the one for slicing and drying for winter use; the other for the sake of the oil extracted from the liver, then as now an important article of barter, being in ready demand by the Puget Sound saw-mills.

Now and then a fur-seal or, better still, a sea-otter would be killed.

But this is not the land of choice furs. Even the marten and the mink were indifferent. Beaver--which in those days, after having been almost hunted to death, were again getting numerous, owing to the low prices which the pelts brought having slackened the trappers' zeal--would often be brought on board, and a few hides of the wapiti, the "elk" of the Western hunter, and the black-tailed deer which swarm in the Vancouver woods, generally appeared at every village. The natives are, however, essentially fish-eaters, and though in every tribe there is generally a hunter or two, the majority of them seldom wander far afield, the interior being in their mythology a land of evil things, of which wise men would do well to keep clear. Even the black bear, which in autumn was often a common feature of the country, where it ranged the crab-apple thickets, was not at this season an object of the chase. Like the deer and the wolves, it was shunning the heat and the flies by summering near the snow which we could notice still capping some of the inland hills, rising to heights of from five thousand to seven thousand feet, and feasting on the countless salmon which were descending every stream, until, with the receding waters, they were left stranded in the upland pools. So cheap were salmon, that at times they could be bought for a cent's worth of "trade goods," and deer in winter for a few charges of powder and shot. A whale-hunt, in which the behemoth was attacked by harpoons with attached inflated sealskins, after a fas.h.i.+on with which I had become familiar when a resident among the Eskimo of Baffin Bay, was a more curious sight. Yet dog-fish oil was the staple of the unpicturesque traffic in which my companions engaged; while I, a hunter after less considered trifles, landed to roam the woods and sh.o.r.es for days at a time, gathering the few flowers which bloomed under these umbrageous forests, though in number sufficient to tempt the red-beaked humming-bird[12] to migrate from Mexico to these northern regions, its tiny nest being frequently noticed on the tops of low bushes.

[Sidenote: The Aht Indians.]

But, after all, the most interesting sight on the sh.o.r.e was the people who inhabited it. They were the "Indians," whom my friend Gilbert Sproat afterwards described as the "Ahts,"[13] for this syllable terminates the name of each of the many little tribes into which they are divided. Yet, with a disregard of the laws of nomenclature, the Ethnological Bureau at Was.h.i.+ngton has only recently announced its intention of knowing them officially by the meaningless t.i.tle of "Wakashan." They are a people by themselves, speaking a language which was confined to Vancouver Island, with the exception of Cape Flattery, the western tip of Was.h.i.+ngton, where the Makkahs speak it. In Vancouver Island, a region about the size of Ireland, three, if not four distinct aboriginal tongues are in use, in addition to Chinook Jargon, a sort of _lingua franca_ employed by the Indians in their intercourse with the whites or with tribes whose speech they do not understand. The Kawitshen (Cowitchan) with its various dialects, the chief of which is the Tsongersth (Songer) of the people near Victoria, prevails from Sooke in the Strait of Juan de Fuca, northwards to Comox. From that point to the northern end of the island various dialects of the Kwakiool (Cogwohl of the traders) are the medium in which the tribesmen do not conceal their thoughts. The people of Quatseno and Koskeemo Sounds, owing to their frequent intercourse with Fort Rupert on the other side of the island, which at this point is at its narrowest, understand and frequently speak the Kwakiool. But after pa.s.sing several days entirely alone among these people, I can vouch for the fact that this dialect is so peculiar that it almost amounts to a separate language. However, from this part, or properly, from Woody Point southwards to Port San Juan, the Aht language is entirely different.

The latter locality,[14] nearly opposite Cape Flattery, on the other side of Juan de Fuca Strait, the most southern part, and the only one on the mainland where it is spoken, is the special territory of the Pachenahts. When I knew them, they were, like all of their race, a dwindling people. A few years earlier, Grant had estimated them to number a hundred men. In 1863 there were not more than a fifth of that number fit to manage a canoe, and the total number of the tribe did not exceed sixty. War with the Sclallans and Makkahs on the opposite sh.o.r.e, and smallpox, which is more powerful than gunpowder, had so decimated them that, no longer able to hold their own, they had leagued with the Nettinahts, old allies of theirs, for mutual defence. Quixto, the chief, I find described in my notes as a stout fellow, terrible at a bargain, very well disposed towards the whites, as are all his tribe, the husband of four wives, an extraordinary number for the Indians of the coast, and reputed to be rich in blankets and the other gear which const.i.tutes wealth among the aborigines of this part of the British Empire. In their palmy days they had made way as far north as Clayoquat Sound and the Ky-yoh-quaht-cutz in one direction, and with the Tsongersth to the eastward, though that now pusillanimous tribe had generally the best of them. Their eastern border is, however, the Jordan River, but they have a fis.h.i.+ng station at the Sombria (c.o.c.kles), and several miles up both the Pandora and Jordan Rivers flowing into their bay. Karleit is their western limit.

The Nettinahts[15] are a more powerful tribe; indeed, at the period when the writer of this book was a prisoner in Nootka Sound, they were among the strongest of all the Aht people. Even then, they had four hundred[16] fighting men, and were a people with whom it did not do to be off your guard. They have--or had--many villages, from Pachena Bay[17] to the west and Karleit to the east, besides three villages in Nettinaht Inlet,[18] eleven fis.h.i.+ng stations on the Nettinaht River, three stations on the Cowitchan Lake, and one at Sguitz on the Cowitchan River itself, while they sometimes descend as far as Tsanena to plant potatoes. They have thus the widest borders of any Indian tribe in Vancouver Island, and have a high reputation as hunters, whale-fishers, and warriors. Moqulla was then the head chief, but every winter a sub-tribe hunted and fished on the Cowitchan Lake, a sheet of water which I was among the first to visit, and the very first to "lay down"

with approximate accuracy. Though nowadays--_Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni!_--there is a waggon road to the lake, and, I am told, "a sort of hotel" on the spot where eight-and-twenty years ago we encamped on extremely short rations, though with the soothing knowledge that if only the Fates were kindly and the wind favourable, there were plenty of trout in the water, and a dinner at large in the woods around.

In those days most of the Nettinaht villages were fortified with wooden pickets to prevent any night attack, and from its situation, Whyack, the princ.i.p.al one (built on a cliff, stockaded on the seaward side, and reached only by a narrow entrance where the surf breaks continuously), is impregnable to hostile canoemen. This people accordingly carried themselves with a high hand, and bore a name correspondingly bad.

Barclay--or Berkeley Sound--is the home of various petty tribes--Ohyahts, Howchuklisahts, Yu-clul-ahts, Toquahts, Seshahts, and Opechesahts. The two with whom I was best acquainted were the last named. The Seshahts lived at the top of the Alberni Ca.n.a.l--a long narrow fjord or cleft in the island--and on the Seshaht Islands in the Sound. During the summer months they came for salmon-fis.h.i.+ng to Sa ha, or the first rapids on the Kleekort or Saman River,[19] their chief being Ia-pou-noul, who had just succeeded to this office owing to the abdication of his father, though the entire fighting force of the tribe did not number over fifty men. As late as 1859 the Seshahts seized an American s.h.i.+p, the _Swiss Boy_. The Opechesahts, of whom I have very kindly memories, as I encamped with their chief for many days, and explored Sproat Lake in his company, were an offshoot of the Seshahts, and had their home on the Kleekort River, but, owing to a ma.s.sacre by the now extinct Quallehum (Qualicom) Indians from the opposite coast, who caught them on an island in Sproat Lake, they were reduced to seventeen men, most of them, however, tall, handsome fellows, and good hunters. Chieftains.h.i.+p in that part of the world goes by inheritance.

Hence there may be many of these hereditary aristocrats in a very small tribe. Accordingly, few though the Opechesaht warriors were, three men, Quatgenam, Kalooish or Kanash, and Qua.s.soon, a s.h.a.ggy, thick-set, and tremendously strong individual who crossed the island with me in 1865, were ent.i.tled to that rank; and it may be added that the women of this, the most freshwater of all the Vancouver tribes, were noted for a more than usual share of good looks.

The Howchuklisahts, whose chief was Maz-o-wennis, numbered forty-five people, including twenty-eight men. They lived in Ouchucklesit[20]

Harbour, off the Alberni Ca.n.a.l; they had also a fis.h.i.+ng camp on Henderson Lake, and two or three lodges on the rapid or stream flowing out of that sheet of water, which was discovered and named by me. But they were "bad to deal with."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OHYAHT INDIAN.]

The You-clul-ahts of Ucluelt Inlet, ruled by Ia-pou-noul, a wealthy man in blankets and other Indian wealth, numbered about one hundred. The chief of the Toquahts in Pipestem Inlet was Sow-wa-wenes, a middle-aged man, who had an easy task, as his lieges numbered only eleven, so that they were thirty years ago on the eve of extinction. The Ohyahts of Grappler Creek were estimated in 1863 to be about one hundred and seventy-five in fighting strength--which, multiplied by four for women and children, would make them, for that region, an unusually strong community. These figures are probably correct, since the man who made the statement was, after living for years amongst them, eventually murdered by the savages,[21] whom he had trusted too implicitly.

Kleesheens, a notorious scoundrel, was their chief. In Clayoquat Sound were the Klahoquahts, Kellsmahts, Ahousahts, Heshquahts, and Mamosahts--the last a little tribe numbering only five men. Indeed, with the exception of the Klahoquahts (who numbered one hundred and sixty men) and the Ahousahts (who claimed two hundred and fifty), these little septs, all devoured by mutual hatred, and frequently at war with each other, were even then dwindling to nothingness. But the Opetsahts, though marked on the Admiralty Chart[22] as a separate tribe, are--or were--only a village of the Ahousahts.

In Nootka Sound, the Muchlahts and Mooachahts lived. In Esperanza Inlet were the villages of two tribes--the Noochahlahts and Ayattisahts, numbering forty and twenty-two men respectively, and chiefed at that time by two worthies of the names of Mala-koi-Kennis, and Quak-ate-Komisa, whom we left in the delectable condition of each expecting the other round to cut his and his tribesmen's throats.

North of this inlet were Ky-yoh-quahts, of the Sound of that name (Kaioquat), numbering two hundred and fifty men. To us they were exceedingly friendly, though a trader whom we met had a different tale to tell of their treatment of him. Kanemat, a young man of about twenty-two, was their chief, though the tribe was virtually governed by his mother, a notable lady named s.h.i.+pally, and at times by his pretty squaw, Wick-anes, and his lively son and heir, Klahe-ek-enes. The Chaykisahts, the Klahosahts, and the Neshahts of Woody Point are the other Aht tribes, though the latter is not included among them by Mr.

Sproat. But they speak their language, of which their chief village is its most northern limit.

Everywhere their tribes showed such evident signs of decadence that by this time some of them must be all but extinct. Still, as the whites had not come much in contact with them--though all of them asked us for "lum" (rum), but did not get it, it is clear enough what had been the traders' staple--the "diseases of civilisation" could not be blamed for their decay. Even then the practical extermination of two tribes was so recent that the facts were still fresh in their neighbours' memory.

These were the Ekkalahts, who lived at the top of the Alberni Ca.n.a.l, but were all but killed off in the same ma.s.sacre by which the Opechesahts were decimated. The only survivor was a man named Keekeon, who lived with the Seshahts, most of whom had forgotten even the name of this vanquished little nationality. The other tribe was the Koapinahts (or Koapin-ah), who at that time numbered sixty or seventy people, but at the period to which I refer they were reduced to two adults--a man and a woman--all the rest having been slaughtered a few years earlier by the Kwakiools from the other side of the island, in conjunction with the Neshahts of Woody Point. In after days I learned to know these tribes very familiarly, crossing and recrossing the island with or to them, hunting and canoeing with them, in the woods, up the rivers, or on the lakes, and gathering from their lips

"This fair report of them who dwell In that retirement."

At first sight these "tinkler loons and siclike companie" were by no means attractive. They were frowsy, and, undeniably, they were not clean. But it was only after penetrating their inner ways, after learning the wealth of custom and folk-lore of which they, all unconscious of their riches, were the jealous custodians, that one began to appreciate these primitive folk from a scientific point of view. Even yet, as the writer recalls the days when he was p.r.o.ne to find men more romantic than is possible in "middle life forlorn," it is difficult not to a.s.sociate the most prosaic of savages with something of the picturesqueness which, in novels at least, used to cling to all their race. For, as the charm of such existence as theirs unfolded itself to the lover of woods and prairies, and lakes and virgin streams, the neglect of soap and of sanitation was forgotten. As Mr. Leland has remarked about the gipsies: "When their lives and legends are known, the ethnologist is apt to think of Tieck's elves, and of the Shang Valley, which was so grim and repulsive from without, but which, once entered, was the gay forecourt of Goblin-land."

In those days little was known--and little cared--about any of the Western tribes, except by the "schooner-men," as the Indians called the roving traders. Their very names were strange to the majority of the Victoria people, and I am told that very few of the colonists of to-day are any better informed. It has therefore been thought fitting that I should go somewhat minutely into the condition of the Indians, at a period when they were more primitive than now, as a slight contribution to the meagre chronicles of a dying race. For if not preserved here, it is likely to perish with almost the last survivor of a little band with whom, during the last two decades, death has been busy.

[Sidenote: Nootka Sound and its memories.]

Among the many inlets which we entered on the cruise which has enabled me to edit this narrative of a less fortunate predecessor, was Nootka Sound. No portion of North-West America was more famous than this spot, for once upon a time it was the former centre of the fur trade, and a locality which more than once figured prominently in diplomatic correspondence. Indeed, so a.s.sociated was it as the type of this part of the western continent, that in many works the heterogeneous group of savages who inhabit the entire coast between the Columbia River and the end of Vancouver Island was described as the "Nootka-Columbians." More than one species of plant and animal attest the fact of this Sound having been the locality at which the naturalist first broke ground in North-West America. There are, for instance, a _Haliotis Nutkaensis_ (an ear sh.e.l.l), a _Rubus Nutka.n.u.s_ (a raspberry); and a yellow cypress, which, however, attained its chief development on the mainland much farther north, bears among its synonyms that of _Chamcaecyparis Nutkaensis_. For though it is undeniable that Ensign Juan Perez discovered it as early as 1779, and named it Port San Lorenzo, after the saint on whose day it was first seen, this fact was unknown or forgotten, when, four years later, Cook entered, and called it King George Sound, though he tells us it was afterwards found that it was called Nootka by the natives. Hence arose the t.i.tle it has ever since borne, though this was an entire mistake on the great navigator's part, since there is no word in the Aht language at all corresponding to Nootka, unless indeed it is "Nootche," a mountain, which not unlikely Cook mistook for that of the inlet generally. The proofs of the presence of earlier visitors were iron and other tools, familiarity with s.h.i.+ps, and two silver spoons of Spanish manufacture, which, we may take it, had been stolen from Perez's s.h.i.+p. The next vessel to enter the Sound was the _Sea Otter_, under the command of Captain James Hanna, who made such a haul in the shape of sea-otter skins that for many years Nootka was the great rendezvous of the fur-traders who cruised as far north as Russian America--now Alaska--and, like Portlock, Dixon, and Meares, charted and named many of the most familiar parts of the British Columbian coast. Meares built the _North-West America_ by the aid of Chinese carpenters in Nootka Sound in the winter of 1788-89, this little sloop being the first vessel, except a canoe, ever constructed in the country north of California.

The lucrative trade done by the English and American traders, some of whom, disposing of their furs in China, sailed under the Portuguese flag and fitted out at Macao as the port most readily open to them, determined the Spaniards to a.s.sert their rights to the original discovery. This was done by Don Estevan Martinez "taking possession" of the Sound, seizing the vessels there, and erecting a fort to maintain the territory against all comers. A hot diplomatic warfare ensued, the result of which was the Convention of Nootka, by which the Sound was made over to Great Britain; and it was while engaged on this mission of receiving the Sound that Vancouver, conjointly with Quadra, the Spanish commander, discovered that the region it intersects is an island, which for a time bore their joint names, but by general consent has that of Vancouver only attached to it nowadays.

This was in the year 1795. Being now indisputably British territory, Nootka and the coasts north and south of it became more and more frequented by fur-traders, who found, in spite of the increasing scarcity of pelts, and the higher prices which keener compet.i.tion brought about, an ample profit in buying tolerably cheap on the American coast and selling very dear to the Chinese, whose love for the sea-otter continues unabated. Many of these adventurers were Americans--hailing, for the most part, from Boston. Hence to this day an American is universally known among the North-Western Indians as a "Boston-man,"

while an Englishman is quite as generally termed a "Kintshautsh man"

(King George man), it being during the long reign of George III. that they first became acquainted with our countrymen. Their barter was carried on in knives, copper plates, copper kettles, muskets, bra.s.s-hilted swords, soldiers' coats and b.u.t.tons, pistols, tomahawks, and blankets, which soon superseded the more costly "Kotsaks" of sea-otter until then the princ.i.p.al garment, though the women wore, as they do still at times (or did when I knew the sh.o.r.e), blankets woven out of pine-tree bark. Rum also seemed to have been freely disposed of, and no doubt many of the outrages which early began to mark the intercourse of the brown men and their white visitors were not a little due to this, and to the customs, ever more free than welcome, in which it is the habit of the mariner to indulge when he and the savage forgather. At all events, the natives and their foreign visitors seem to have come very soon into collision. Indeed, it was seldom that a voyage was completed without some outrage on one or both sides, followed by reprisals from the party supposed to have been wronged. Thus part of the crew of the _Imperial Eagle_, under the command of Captain Barclay,[23]

who discovered and named in his own honour the Sound so called, were murdered at "Queenhythe,"[24] south of Juan de Fuca Strait, which Barclay was amongst the first to explore, or rather to rediscover. At a later date, namely, in 1805, the _Atahualpa_ of Rhode Island was attacked in Millbank Sound, and her captain, mate, and six seamen were killed. In 1811 the _Tonquin_, belonging to John Jacob Astor's romantic fur-trading adventure, which is so well known from Was.h.i.+ngton Irving's _Astoria_, was seized by the savages on this coast, and then blown up by M'Kay, the chief trader, with the entire crew and their a.s.sailants. The scene of the catastrophe has been stated to be Nootka, but other commentators have fixed upon Barclay Sound, and as late as 1863 an intelligent trader informed me that some s.h.i.+p's timbers, half buried in the sand there, were attributed by the Indians to some disastrous event, which he believed to have been the one in question.[25] I am, however, now inclined to think that in crediting Nahwitti, at the northern end of Vancouver Island, with this notable event in the early history of North-West America,[26] Dr. George Dawson has arrived at the truth.

To this day--or until very recently--the Indians of the North-West coast are not accounted very trustworthy, and at the period when I knew them they were suspected of killing several traders and of looting more than one small vessel, acts which earned for them frequent visits from the gunboats at Esquimault, and in several instances the undesirable distinction of having their villages sh.e.l.led when they refused to give up the offenders--generally a difficult operation, since it meant pretty well the entire village.