170 A NOVEL PROMENADE. 



to refuse, I paraded the beach, linked arm-in- 

 arm with the ugliest specimen of humanity eyes 

 ever beheld. I wonder if, before or since, a naked 

 savage and civilised man ever walked together 

 on the sea-beach, listening to 'what the wild 

 waves were saying,' sheltered from the rain by a 

 green gingham umbrella ! I trow not. I should 

 have been no more astonished at seeing a seal, or 

 old Neptune himself, with an umbrella, than I 

 was at a naked Indian so protected on the beach 

 at Fort Rupert. 



This was not my only adventure whilst stay- 

 ing at the fort. The beach runs out very flat 

 for a long distance seaward; the rocks appear 

 a slaty kind of shingle, with seams of coal crop- 

 ping out in every direction. The pines (Abies 

 Douglassii) grow down to highwater-mark, at- 

 taining a height of 250 feet and over, straight 

 as a flagstaff. On the branches are placed 

 quaint-looking affairs, that you discover, on in- 

 quiry, to be coffins ; but how the friends of 

 the departed get the boxes up into the trees, or 

 how they keep them there when they are up, 

 is more than I can tell. The coffin is usu- 

 ally an old canoe, lashed round and round, 

 like an Egyptian mummy-case, with the inner 

 bark of the cedar-tree ; but of this, and other 



