at Washington has only recently announced its intention of knowing them officially by the meaningless title 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 Washington, 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 passing 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 shore, 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 constitutes 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 fishing station at the Sombria (Cockles), 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 fishing 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 principal 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—a Canal long narrow fjord or cleft in the island—and on the Seshaht Islands in the Sound. During the summer months they came for salmon-fishing 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 ship, 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 massacre 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. Chieftainship 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 Quassoon, a shaggy, thick-set, and tremendously strong individual who crossed the island with me in 1865, were entitled 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