THE PACIFIC SALMON. 65 



men once more. Stripping ourselves to the red flannel, we 

 leaped in the brook, brandishing our clubs, and for half an 

 hour waged a war on the poor old Dog Salmon that was never 

 excelled by starving red men for ferocity or destructiveness. 

 The clubs fell with a pendulum-like regularity on the heads of 

 the Salmon. They butted their rough noses against us, and 

 tried to force their heads beneath our feet. When we stooped 

 they would leap over us. It was a scene of grandeur as well 

 as of carnage. Above us frowned the eternal snow-capped 

 mountains; below slept the flower-decked valley of the Sumas; 

 beyond, the great Frazer, glittering in the light of the noonday 

 sun, swept onward to the ocean. Around us were the nude red 

 men, short of limb and long of body, whose bronze skins con- 

 trasted strangely with the small, broad-shouldered, slender- 

 waisted white men. It took but a glance to remind one of 

 the change that food, shelter, and civilization wrought in the 

 white men. They were much the smaller, but in a battle 

 without weapons there would have been a sure victory for 

 the whites, even if they were but two to eight. 



For half an hour the "Stone Age" war rolled on. All that 

 time the living horde in its blue and crimson dress swept on 

 its upward way to the mountain lake; and all that time had 

 the nude men beaten and thumped the fish as they swept past. 



At last the voice of Skool rang out, "Hy-yu! hy-yu!" 

 (enough, enough). We turned and saw a wall of Salmon 

 piled on the bank. Dropping our clubs and dressing our- 

 selves, we returned to civilization, and Skool had plenty of 

 Salmon for his potlatch, and yet none to spare. 



It was nearly sunset when the steamer Premier left her 

 wharf at Vancouver, steamed out into the inlet, and thence 

 into the gulf. A smoky haze wrapped the distant mountains, 

 and the waters of the Gulf of Georgia were unruffled by even 

 the slightest breeze. The August sun beat fiercely down on 

 the deck, and most of the passengers kept in the shade of the 

 5 



