The Mountaineer 43 
the sky and open the box of daylight, by means of which the 
first day on the earth was started. Then he set out trees in 
all directions upon the earth. 
When Snoqualm, the moon god, discovered that the sun 
had been stolen, he started in great fury for the hole in the 
sky. But losing control of himself in his passage, he dropped 
to the earth and was transformed by Speow into a huge pile 
of rocks, near the Cascade Mountains. After this Speow had 
entire control of the operation of the heavenly bodies. He would 
regularly throw the sun up into the air every morning, while 
at night it would always drop into the great water at the 
west. When this occurred Speow would shut up the box of 
daylight, so that no one could see his operations, and then he 
would go out into the water and secure the sun. Then with 
the sun under his arm he would journey back again to his 
tent and open the box which made the earth all light again 
and he would fling the sun up into the sky as before. This 
is the cause of the regular alternation of day and night. The 
reason that the days are so much longer in the summer than 
in the winter is that on account of the rain and snow of winter 
it takes Speow a long time to get back from the ocean with 
the sun, whereas during the dry and pleasant weather of the 
summer he can make the journey in a very short time. We 
may remark, paranthetically, that this seems to be philosophy 
back side before, but it is not much worse than the ancient 
systems of astronomy. 
Speow was never seen by an Indian but once. This hap- 
pened upon the steep bluff at the south end of Camano Island. 
A party of Indians going down the Sound had landed at that 
point to camp and to their astonishment and terror discovered 
standing upon the bluff a being whom they were satisfied was 
Speow. He was of stupendous size, being three times as tall 
as a fir tree and covered all over with light such as can be seen 
in phosphorent wood. When he found that the Indians had 
seen him he was very angry and kicked over a portion of the 
bluff so that it fell upon the Indian camp and killed all of 
them except the one from whom we have the account. On 
account of that startling catastrophe the Indians were ac- 
customed until quite recent times to wail for the dead when- 
ever they passed that point. 
