From Taku River to Taylor Bay 



glaciers lingering about the bay and the streams that 

 pour from them are busy night and day bringing in 

 sand and mud and stones, at the rate of tons every 

 minute, to fill it up. Then, as the seasons grow 

 warmer, there will be fields here for the plough. 



Our Indians, exhilarated by the sunshine, were 

 garrulous as the gulls and plovers, and pulled heartily 

 at their oars, evidently glad to get out of the ice with 

 a whole boat. 



"Now for Taku," they said, as we glided over the 

 shining water. ''Good-bye, Ice-Mountains ; good-bye, 

 Sum Dum." Soon a light breeze came, and they un- 

 furled the sail and laid away their oars and began, as 

 usual in such free times, to put their goods in order, 

 unpacking and sunning provisions, guns, ropes, cloth- 

 ing, etc. Joe has an old flintlock musket suggestive 

 of Hudson's Bay times, which he wished to discharge 

 and reload. So, stepping in front of the sail, he fired 

 at a gull that was flying past before I could prevent 

 him, and it fell slowly with outspread wings along- 

 side the canoe, with blood dripping from its bill. I 

 asked him why he had killed the bird, and followed 

 the question by a severe reprimand for his stupid 

 cruelty, to which he could offer no other excuse than 

 that he had learned from the whites to be careless 

 about taking life. Captain Tyeen denounced the deed 

 as likely to bring bad luck. 



Before the whites came most of the Thlinkits held, 

 with Agassiz, that animals have souls, and that it 

 was wrong and unlucky to even speak disrespectfully 

 of the fishes or any of the animals that supplied them 



[ 235 1 



