These up-to-date motorboats, so broad in the waist to hold the net and the fish-cargo, bear in their rounded bows striking psychological resemblance in quaint twist of line to the old Saint Malo fishboats riding in the anchorage sentried off Cape Barrie at Percé, while at the same moment in that blunt blow, there is suggestion both of the tripping old canal-barge of the Richelieu and of the craft of the Yang-tse, so that one involuntarily murmurs “Sampans of Salmon”. So too, in the lower river-silt bank platformed by rough planks and water-soaked piles, there is both touch of Fundy and whiff of Asiatic Deltas.
The little wooden shack homes of these Japanese fisher folk of Steveston are raised above flood-danger on wooden platforms and set about with wooden yards, fronted by clear-running canals crossed by foot bridges of wide plank.
Who can screen a picture of Japan without a bridge, or of a Japanese home, however homely, but its poverty is beatified by masses of flowers? So, here against the unpainted walls, set about on the floor of the wooden yard, are buckets and tubs of Chrysanthemums a-bloom, Japan-transplanted. And do the flowers stop at the bucket or the box? Not at all. Marigolds and cornflowers and candytuft and many others under the loving hand of the Jap-mother, are coaxed out of every crevice of river-silt staved-up by any old bit of wood. Vines set near the edge of the tiny canals trail tendril fingers to touch the water. And the little bridges are so invaded by pots of bloom that the man of the family must surely object to the narrow gangway allowed him to and from his boats, did he not love flowers as keenly as his little Flower-of-Japan wife.
Passing to and fro here and in the salmon-factories one begins to realize that the Japanese women share the work on the fish with the men. One might even call these little women “the ’longshoremen of Salmon” as they stand at the tables,—groaning under the weight of sockeye and its lesser brethren—their babies tied to their backs with a soft shawl, in the same way that the Cree mother carries her baby in a tikanagan. Many a lullaby is crooned while the skilful brown fingers place the juicy steaks in the little flat tins. The gentle rocking of the mother’s swaying figure sends the baby to sleep more effectively than any cradle. And the mother and her baby are together through the long day of toil.
As one steps along the factory-floors between the long rows of women, figures just made by Nature for the kimona and the smooth shiny ebon-elegance of the Japanese coiffure, these plump little women with their brown-eyed babies on their backs are indeed a picturesque contribution to the genre appearing on the vast stage from Atlantic to Pacific that is—the Dominion. Nor is canning the fish the limit of the Japanese woman’s usefulness. Not all of them work in the factories. Figures of the wharf-side and of the platform-yards by the flowering banks of the canals are the great seines a-drying. And while one sees men, sitting about in the sun, netting-needle in hand, mending these nets, just as frequently one happens on some strong Japanese woman, long knife in hand, cutting away the large wooden floats, against the net’s being laid away at the close of the season, her baby, released from the back cradle-perambulator, playing at her side.
CHAPTER XXXII.
THE INDIANS OF ALERT BAY.
Although situated directly....
LTHOUGH situated directly on the Alaskan coastal highway, with a constant stream of large freight and passenger steamers calling at the cannery pier or dropping anchor in its fine harbour, Alert Bay is a spot haunted by the spirit of the untamed, full of those powerful undercurrents that thrive on the edge of the wilderness. It is altogether mysterious and bizarre.
Part of this spirit is due to the wildness of nature hereabouts, to the high-reaching mountains, the low-hanging, encircling mists, the dark woods, and, in the rainy season, the general atmospheric wetness clinging to the nearer distances; but specifically it is due to other things, things which the natural setting helps to accentuate and for which it forms a splendidly effective stage. Merely to mention Alert Bay is to think of Indians. For this little trading-post, now grown to prime importance as a Pacific coast port-of-call, has filled a high place in coastal Indian life from time immemorial.