166 THE SEA. 



comfortable withal inside, and where a rude plenty reigns ; or to Beacon Hill, where there 

 is an excellent race-course and drive, which commands fine views up and down the 

 Straits. In sight is San Juan Island, over which England and America once squabbled, 

 while the two garrisons which occupied it fraternised cordially, and outvied with each 

 other in hospitality. The island rocky, and covered with forest and underbrush, with a 

 farm or two, made by clearing away the big trees, with not a little difficulty, and burning 

 and partially uprooting the stumps does not look a worthy subject for international 

 differences. But the fact is, that it commands the Straits to some extent. However, all 

 that is over now, and it is England's property by diplomatic arrangement. There are 

 other islands, nearly as large, in the archipelago which stretches northward up the Gulf 

 of Georgia, which have not a single human inhabitant, and have never been visited, except 

 by some stray Indians, miners, or traders who have gone ashore to cook a meal or camp 

 for the night. 



Any one who has travelled by small canoes on the sea must remember those happy 

 eamping-times, when, often wet, and always hungry and tired, the little party cautiously 

 selected some sheltered nook or specially good beach, and then paddled with a will ashore. 

 No lack of drift-wood or small trees on that coast, and no lord of the manor to interfere 

 with one taking it. A glorious fire is soon raised, and the cooking preparations commenced. 

 Sometimes it is only the stereotyped tea frying-pan bread (something like the Australian 

 "damper," only baked before the fire), or "slapjacks" (i.e., flour-and- water pancakes), fried 

 bacon, and boiled Chili beans ; but of ttimes it can be varied by excellent fish, game, bear- 

 meat, venison, or moose-meat, purchased from some passing Indians, or killed by themselves. 

 It is absurd to suppose that " roughing it " need mean hardship and semi-starvation all the 

 time. Not a bit of it ! On the northern coasts now being described, one may often live 

 magnificently, and most travellers learn instinctively to cook, and make the most of things. 

 Nothing is finer in camp than a roast fish say a salmon split and gutted, and stuck on a 

 stick before the fire, not over it. A few dozen turns, and you have a dish worthy of a prince. 

 Or a composition stew say of deer and bear-meat and beaver's tail, well seasoned, and 

 with such vegetables as you may obtain there ; potatoes from some seaside farm and there 

 are such on that coast, where the settler is as brown as his Indian wife or compressed 

 vegetables, often taken on exploring expeditions. Or, again, venison dipped in a thick 

 batter and thrown into a pan of boiling-hot fat, making a kind of meat fritter, with not a 

 drop of its juices wasted. Some of these explorers and miners are veritable chefs. They 

 can make good light bread in the woods from plain flour, water, and salt, and ask no 

 oven but a frying-pan. They will make beans, of a kind only given to horses at home, 

 into a delicious dish, by boiling them soft a long job, generally done at the night camp 

 and then frying them with bread-crumbs and pieces of bacon in the morning, till they 

 are brown and crisp. 



It was at one of these camps, on an island in the Gulf of Georgia, that a camp fire 

 spread to some grass and underbrush, mounted with lightning rapidity a steep slope, and 

 in a few minutes the forest at the top was ablaze. The whole island was soon in flames ! 

 For hours afterwards the flames and smoke could be seen. No harm was done; for it is 

 extremely unlikely that island will be inhabited for the next five hundred years. But 



