A Canoe Voyage to Northward 



men, hideously blackened, ventured out and stared at 

 us, then, calling to their companions, other black and 

 burning heads appeared, and we began to fear that 

 like the Alloway Kirk witches the whole legion was 

 about to sally forth. But, instead, those outside sud- 

 denly crawled and tumbled in again. We were thus 

 allowed to take a general view of the place and return 

 to our canoe unmolested. But ere we could get away, 

 three old women came swaggering and grinning down 

 to the beach, and Toyatte was discovered by a man 

 with whom he had once had a business misunder- 

 standing, who, burning for revenge, was now jumping 

 and howling and threatening as only a drunken Indian 

 may, while our heroic old captain, in severe icy maj- 

 esty, stood erect and motionless, uttering never a 

 word. Kadachan, on the contrary, was well nigh 

 smothered with the drunken caresses of one of his 

 father's tillicums (friends), who insisted on his going 

 l?ack with him into the house. But reversing the 

 words of St. Paul in his account of his shipwreck, it 

 came to pass that we all at length got safe to sea and by 

 hard rowing managed to reach a fine harbor before 

 dark, fifteen sweet, serene miles from the howlers. 

 Our camp this evening was made at the head of a 

 narrow bay bordered by spruce and hemlock woods. 

 We made our beds beneath a grand old Sitka spruce 

 five feet in diameter, whose broad, winglike branches 

 were outspread immediately above our heads. The 

 night picture as I stood back to see it in the firelight 

 was this one great tree, relieved against the gloom of 

 the woods back of it, the light on the low branches 



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