[81] For an account of the habits and history of these valued animals, the reader is referred to The Countries of the World, vol. i. p. 304.
[82] The harpoon is at present a little different in construction. Pine resin, not "turpentine," is used for the purpose described, and the tips of deers' horns are utilised for the barbs. The most remarkable fact about the west coast of Vancouver Island whaling is its use of inflated sealskins to impede the motion of the animal through the water. This is an Eskimo contrivance in use by the Alaskans and other extreme northern tribes, from whom the West Vancouverians seem to have borrowed it. In Sproat's Scenes and Studies of Savage Life, p. 226, there is an excellent description of whaling as practised in that part of Vancouver Island. The species pursued is usually finbacks, though a "black fish" with good whalebone is occasionally captured.
[83] The honour of using the harpoon is a hereditary privilege, enjoyed by only a few men in a tribe, and previous to the whaling season the crews have to practise all manner of ascetic practices in order to ensure good luck in the venture.
[84] This porpoise Dr. Gray considered, after examining a skull which I brought to the British Museum in 1866, to differ little, if at all, from the Phocæna communis of the Atlantic; but Dr. (afterwards Sir) W. H. Flower (List of the Specimens of Cetacea, etc., 1885, p. 16) seems to be of a different opinion.
[85] This "sea-cow," of which Meares also speaks as an animal hunted by the Nootka people, though rarely seen so far south, must, one might think, be another name for the seal or "sea-calf," were not the latter expressly referred to by name. The sea-cow, dugong, or manatee is not found in these seas, and the Rhytina Stelleri, once so abundant on Behring Island in Behring Strait, is generally considered to have been exterminated in the interval between 1741-1768. This, however, is hardly in accordance with fact, for, as evidence collected by Nordenskjöld proves, they were occasionally killed in 1780, while one was seen as late as 1854. It is therefore by no means improbable that in 1803 a few stragglers were still waiting their end on the shores of Vancouver Island. The sea-lion (Eumetopias Stelleri) is a seal also verging on extinction, the Otaria ursinus being now the fur seal of commerce (and politics) in that part of the North Pacific.
[86] A species of cedar (Thuja) is the wood used.
CHAPTER VIII
MUSIC—MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS—SLAVES—NEIGHBOURING TRIBES—TRADE WITH THESE—ARMY