Dr. Franz Boas, in his "Kwakiutl Texts," describes a game formerly played with stone disks by the Kwakiutls. They also had a myth that a game was played with these disks between the birds of the upper world and the myth-people, that is, "all the animals and all the birds." The four disks were called the "mist-covered gambling stone," the "rainbow gambling stone," the "cloud-covered gambling stone," and the "carrier of the world." The woodpecker and the other myth-birds played on one side; the Thunder-bird and the birds of the upper air on the other. The contestants were ranged in two rows; the gambling stones were thrown along the middle between them, and they speared them with their beaks. The Thunder-bird and the birds of the upper air were beaten. This myth is given as an explanation of the reason for playing the game with the gambling stones, which are called lælæ.
The Kwakiutls still play many of their ancient and picturesque gambling games at their potlatches.
Johnstone Strait is fifty-five miles long, and is continued by Broughton Strait, fifteen miles long, which enters Queen Charlotte Sound.
Here is a second, and smaller, Galiana Island, and on its western end is a spired rock which, some historians assert, may be "the great headland or island with an exceeding high pinnacle or spired rock thereon," which Juan de Fuca claimed to discover, and which won for him the charge of being an "audacious guesser" and an "unscrupulous liar." His believers, however, affirm that, having sailed for twenty days in the inland sea, he discovered this pinnacle at the entrance to what he supposed to be the Atlantic Ocean; and so sailed back the course he had come, believing himself to have been successful in discovering the famed strait of Anian. Why Vancouver's mistakes, failures, and faults should all be condoned, and Juan de Fuca's most uncompromisingly condemned, is difficult to understand.
Fort Rupert, on the northern end of Vancouver Island, beyond Broughton Strait, is an old Hudson's Bay post, situated on Beaver Harbor. The fort was built in 1849, and was strongly defended, troubles frequently arising from the attacks of Kwakiutl and Haidah Indians. Great potlatches were held there, and the chief's lodge was as notable as was the "Old-Man House" of Chief Seattle. It was one hundred feet long and eighty feet wide, and rested on carved corner posts. There was an immense wooden potlatch dish that held food for one hundred people.
Queen Charlotte Sound is a splendid sweep of purple water; but tourists do not, usually, spend much time enjoying its beauty. Their berths possess charms that endure until shelter of the islands is once more assured, after the forty miles of open exposure to the swell of the ocean which is not always mild, notwithstanding its name. Those who miss it, miss one of the most beautiful features of the inland voyage. The warm breath of the Kuro Siwo, penetrating all these inland seas and passages, is converted by the great white peaks of the horizon into pearl-like mist that drifts in clouds and fragments upon the blue waters. Nowhere are these mists more frequent, nor more elusive, than in Queen Charlotte Sound. They roll upon the sparkling surface like thistle-down along a country lane—here one instant, vanished the next. At sunrise they take on the delicate tones of the primrose or the pinkish star-flower; at sunset, all the royal rose and purple blendings; all the warm flushes of amber, orange, and gold. Through a maze of pale yellow, whose fine cool needles sting one's face and set one's hair with seed-pearls, one passes into a little open water-world where a blue sky sparkles above a bluer sea, and the air is like clear, washed gold. But a mile ahead a solid wall of amethyst closes in this brilliant sea; and presently the steamer glides into it, shattering it into particles that set the hair with amethysts, instead of pearls. Sometimes these clear spaces resemble rooms walled in different colors, but ceiled and floored in blue. Other times, the whole sound is clear, blue, shining; while exquisite gossamers of changeful tints wrap and cling about the islands, wind scarfs around the green hills, or set upon the brows of majestic snow-monarchs crowns as jewelled and as evanescent as those worn by the real kings of the earth. Now and then a lofty fir or cedar may be seen draped with slender mist-veils as a maiden might wind a scarf of cobwebby lace about her form and head and arms—so lightly and so gracefully, and with such art, do the delicate folds trail in and out among the emerald-green branches of the tree.
It is this warm and excessive moisture—this daily mist-shower—that bequeaths to British Columbia and Alaska their marvellous and luxuriant growth of vegetation, their spiced sweetness of atmosphere, their fairness and freshness of complexion—blending and constituting that indescribable charm which inspires one, standing on the deck of a steamer at early dawn, to give thanks to God that he is alive and sailing the blue water-ways of this sublime country.
"I don't know what it is that keeps pulling me back to this country," said a man in the garb of a laborer, one day. He stood down in the bow of the steamer, his hands were in his pockets, his throat was bared to the wind; his blue eyes—sunken, but burning with that fire which never dies in the eyes of one who loves nature—were gazing up the pale-green narrow avenue named Grenville Channel. "It's something that you can't exactly put into words. You don't know that it's got hold of you while you're up here, but before you've been 'outside' a month, all at once you find it pulling at you—and after it begins, it never lets up. You try to think what it is up here that you want so; what it is keeps begging at you to come back. Maybe there ain't a darn soul up here you care particular about! Maybe you ain't got an interest in a claim worth hens' teeth! Maybe you're broke and know you'll have to work like a go-devil when you get here! It don't make any difference. It's just Alaska. It calls you and calls you and calls you. Maybe you can't come, so you keep pretending you don't hear—but Lord, you do hear! Maybe somebody shakes hands as if he liked you—and there's Alaska up and calling right through you, till you feel your heart shake! Maybe a phonograph sets up a tune they used to deal out at Magnuson's roadhouse on the trail—and you hear that blame lonesome waterfall up in Keystone Canyon calling you as plain as you hear the phonograph! Maybe you smell something like the sun shining on snow, all mixed up with tundra and salt air—and there's double quick action on your eyes and a lump in your throat that won't be swallowed down! Maybe you see a white mountain, or a green valley, or a big river, or a blue strait, or a waterfall—and like a flash your heart opens, and shuts in an ache for Alaska that stays!... No, I don't know what it is, but I do know how it is; and so does every other poor devil that ever heard that something calling him that's just Alaska. It wakes you up in the middle of the night, just as plain as if somebody had said your name out loud, and you just lay there the rest of the night aching to go. I tell you what, if ever a country had a spirit, it's Alaska; and when it once gets hold of you and gets to calling you to come, you might just as well get up and start, for it calls you and follows you, and haunts you till you do."
It is the pleading of the mountains and the pleading of the sea woven into one call and sent floating down laden with the sweetness of the splendid spaces. No mountaineer can say why he goes back to the mountains; no sailor why he cannot leave the sea. No one has yet seen the spirit that dwells in the waterfall, but all have heard it calling and have known its spell.