FOOTNOTES:
[63] The exact position of the village is lat. 49° 35' 31" N.; long. 126° 37' 32" W.
[64] According to the Admiralty Sailing Directions, the Cove is about two cables in extent, and sheltered from the sea by a small rocky high-water island on its east side. It affords anchorage in the middle for only one vessel of moderate size, though several small vessels might find shelter. When Vancouver visited it in 1792, no less than eight ships were in it, most of them small, and secured to the shore by hawsers.
[65] This means farther up the Sound; for there are villages in the interior of Vancouver Island. The Admiralty Sailing Directions declare that not a trace of the Spanish settlement now exists. This is scarcely correct, for an indistinct ridge shows the site of houses, and here and there a few bricks half hidden in the ground may be detected. I have seen a cannon ball and a Mexican dollar found there. Many of the Nootka Indians have large moustaches and whiskers, which may possibly be due to their Spanish blood, and others were decidedly Chinese-looking, a fact which may be traced to the presence of Meares's Chinese carpenters in 1778-79. Some of them can, or could, thirty years ago, by tradition, count ten in Spanish; and there is a legend in the Sound to the effect that the white men had begun to cultivate the ground, and to erect a stockade and fort; when one day a ship came with papers for the head man, who was observed to cry, and all the foreigners became sad. The next day they began moving their goods to the ship. But, as Mr. Sproat suggests, this might have reference to Meares's settlement.
[66] This is a good description of the house of Maquina's grandson, as I saw it fifty-eight years after Jewitt's time.
[67] Dog's hair. A tribe on Fraser River used to keep flocks of these curs, which they periodically clipped like sheep.
[68] Probably the Klayoquahts (see p. 77).
[69] Klahosahts.
[70] The outside is made of cedar bark, the inside of white-hair bark.
[71] I have more than once discussed the identity of this animal with Indian traders. None of them recognised it, nor, indeed, were acquainted with the animal by the name Jewitt applies to it. It is, however, not unlikely the North-Western marmot (Arctomys pruinosus), specimens of which are now and then—though, it must be admitted, rarely—seen in Vancouver Island; but it is more common farther south. The Alberni Indians (Seshahts and Opechesahts) used to talk of a beast called Sit-si-tehl, which we took to be the marmot, and Mr. Sproat saw one; I was not so fortunate.
[72] In the opinion of the judicious Jewitt, every one who has eaten food—especially salmon and shell-fish—cooked after this fashion will coincide. Experto crede.
[73] Or to one or more of the neighbouring tribes, such feasts being known as Wawkoahs.