84 CRUISINGS IN THE CASCADES 



in long clothes in fact, not in any clothes worth men- 

 tioning), came swarming out to meet us. Their abode 

 was a shanty about twelve feet square, made by set- 

 ting four corner posts into the ground, nailing cross- 

 ribs on, and over these clapboards riven from the 

 native cedars, and the roof was of the same material. 

 The adult members of this social alliance had been 

 engaged in catching and drying salmon during the 

 recent run; the heads, entrails and backbones of which 

 had been dumped into the river at their very door. 

 There being no current near the shore they had sunk 

 in barely enough water to cover them, and lay there 

 rotting and pointing the water used by the family 

 for drinking and cooking. Cart-loads of this offal 

 were also lying about the dooryard, and had been 

 trampled into and mixed up with the mud until the 

 whole outfit stunk like a tanyard. 



Within was a picture of filth and squalor that 

 beggars description. The floor of the hut was of 

 mother earth. A couple of logs with two clapboards 

 laid across them formed the only seats. On one side 

 was a pile of brush, hay, and dirty, filthy blankets, 

 indiscriminately mixed, on which the entire three 

 families slept, presumably in the same fashion. Near 

 the centre of the hut a small fire struggled for exist- 

 ence, and that portion of the smoke that was not 

 absorbed by the people, the drying fish and other 

 objects in the room, escaped through a hole in the 

 centre of the roof. The children, barefooted and half - 

 naked^ came in out of the rain, mud, and fish carrion, 

 in which they had been tramping about, and sat or 

 lay on the ground about the fire, looking as happy 

 as a litter of pigs in a mud hole. On poles, attached 



