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 
