CANDLE-FISH. 89 
upon its habits, its coming and going, and have 
noted how it is caught and cured. 
Picture my home—an Indian village, on the 
north shore of British Columbia. The village is 
prettily situated on a rocky point of land, chosen, 
as all Indian villages are, with an eye to preven- 
tion of surprise from concealed foes. Rearward 
it is guarded by a steep hill, and it commands 
from the front the entrance to one of those long 
canals, which, as [have previously stated, resemble 
the fiords of Norway, often running thirty or forty 
miles inland. 
The dwellings consist of ten or fifteen rude 
sheds, about twenty yards long and twelve wide, 
built of rough cedar-planks ; the roof a single 
slant covered with poles and rushes. Six or 
eight families live in each shed. Every family 
has its own fire on the ground, and the smoke, 
that must find its way out as best it can through 
eracks and holes (chimneys being objected to), 
hangs in a dense upper cloud, so that a man 
can only keep his head out of it by squatting on 
the ground: to stand up is to runarisk of suffo- 
eation. The children of all ages, in droves, naked 
and filthy, live under the smoke; as well as 
squaws, who squat round the smouldering logs; in- 
numerable dogs, like starving wolves, prick-eared, 
