“I have kept this till the missionary would come,” she said, as she opened out before us a little flour—possibly the only flour they had had for months, as the people did not see much flour in those days. “I will make them a cake, I will.”
We were too busy to notice very closely what she was doing, but we found in a few moments that she had the little flour in the same basket in which she had just washed the potatoes. We saw her give her hands a little rinse in the water, but we were never sure whether she threw this out or whether it was the same into which she put the flour. Soon, however, it was worked up into a paste, and taking it out in her hands she pressed it into a kind of cake. I had a chance then to notice her arms, bare from the shoulders, looking on the outside very black and dirty, and on the inside, where her cooking had removed some of the dirt, a little less dark. No wonder the cake was such a piebald looking thing!
This black and white cake was thrown into a hole, which she had scratched among the ashes, to bake, while our hostess got some hot water and made a kind of tea from certain herbs which they used, and which went under the name of “Indian tea.” In a few minutes, the cake, now quite baked, was poked out with a stick, broken in pieces and laid on a dish before us. With this and the tea, as dessert, we finished our supper.
Some have asked, “Did you eat it?” Certainly, we ate it, with all the relish we could, and would never have thought of refusing it after all the kindness shown by the dear old people of the house. It is true that these people were dirty beyond description, but out of a warm heart they did their best for us, and endeavored to make us comfortable, and we would have been meanly ungrateful if we had not appreciated it.
After a little religious service we retired to rest, not on the feather-bed that was offered us by the old chief, but with our own blankets, now warm and steaming, laid on some smooth rush mats; and though the dogs crowded around and seemed to quarrel as to which should be the nearest to us, and the fleas swarmed in such numbers as to drive sleep far away from one who was not used to them, we managed to rest very comfortably.
Millions of Mosquitoes.
In the Fraser Valley, besides the fleas, we were besieged by myriads of mosquitoes, that bred in the swales and sloughs and low marshy places, particularly after high water. They literally swarmed, and in some places rose in clouds as one passed, millions of them.
I noticed in my journeys on horseback that my little pony, otherwise gentle and manageable, would jump and run at times in an unaccountable fashion. At such times the mosquitoes would strike my face and forehead like a storm of hail. Then it occurred to me that the intelligent little beast only ran when passing through the spots where these insects mostly swarmed, and henceforward I let him gallop.
The settlers tell of dogs and calves being killed by the mosquitoes, and one reputable gentleman maintains that he had in his possession at one time a cow whose tail had been so bitten by these venomous pests that it dropped off.
An amusing incident took place at Langley on one of my visits to the river. The high water was just going down, and the mosquitoes were very bad. I was invited to stop over night at the home of a settler, who had just built a little log house of two rooms on a ridge in front of a great swale. The father and mother slept in a little room partitioned off, and as the son-in-law was away, their daughter occupied the room with her parents and left to me the bed the young people had. The room was open to the shingles, and the hot day and cooling evening had brought in the little pests in swarms.