Rising from the Grave.
The coal company at Nanaimo were building a wharf from a point in the harbor, and paid for the removal of a number of Indian bodies which had been buried near the spot. New graves were dug on a little side hill, and to these the remains were transferred. The holes, however, were quite shallow, owing to the presence of a clay hard-pan underneath. Next day a great outcry was made in the camp, and intense excitement prevailed, for most of the boxes had risen up and had come out of the graves. We went down to discover the cause of the disturbance, and what had seemed to the poor people so strange and uncanny had been caused by the heavy rain of the night before filling the shallow graves and floating out what they contained. It took some time to quiet the fears of the people.
The men who do anything in any way in the digging of the grave or the handling of the body are paid excessively for their services. This may be due, in part, to their horrible fear of the dead.