The Cassiar Trail 



many binding cross-pieces on which tons of salmon 

 were being dried. The heads were strung on separate 

 poles and the roes packed in willow baskets, all being 

 well smoked from fires in the middle of the floor. The 

 largest of the booths near the bank of the river was 

 about forty feet square. Beds made of spruce and 

 pine boughs were spread all around the walls, on 

 which some of the Indians lay asleep; some were 

 braiding ropes, others sitting and lounging, gossiping 

 and courting, while a little baby was swinging in a 

 hammock. All seemed to be light-hearted and jolly, 

 with work enough and wit enough to maintain health 

 and comfort. In the winter they are said to dwell in 

 substantial huts in the woods, where game, especially 

 caribou, is abundant. They are pale copper-colored, 

 have small feet and hands, are not at all negroish in 

 lips or cheeks like some of the coast tribes, nor so 

 thickset, short-necked, or heavy-featured in general. 



One of the most striking of the geological features 

 of this region are immense gravel deposits displayed 

 in sections on the walls of the river gorges. About two 

 miles above the North Fork confluence there is a 

 bluff of basalt three hundred and fifty feet high, and 

 above this a bed of gravel four hundred feet thick, 

 while beneath the basalt there is another bed at least 

 fifty feet thick. 



From "Ward's," seventeen miles beyond Tele- 

 graph, and about fourteen hundred feet above sea- 

 level, the trail ascends a gravel ridge to a pine-and- 

 fir-covered plateau twenty-one hundred feet above 

 the sea. Thence for three miles the trail leads through 



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