TRADITIONS—LANGUAGE—MANUFACTURES. 215 
the Chinese do. In an early number of the Overland Monthly, under the 
title of “The King of Clear Lake”, the reader will find an interesting story 
bearing on this feature. It relates how the chief, Salvador, hanged one of 
his subjects for adultery with a.white man; and it has an additional interest 
as showing that in this tribe the chief exercised the power of life and death, 
which was unusual. But even among the Makhelchel the title “king” is 
hardly appropriate. 
In their pride and haughtiness they insist on an indigenous origin for 
themselves, and refuse to believe that their mortal ancestors ever dwelt in 
any other country, though they admit that the Great Man, their divine 
creator, came from the west in a remote antiquity, and formed them from 
the soil of their beloved island. The primordial fire also came from the west, 
instead of the east, as in the traditions of other tribes. Further, they relate 
a curious legend about a glorious and resplendent beast which once existed 
in the west, and which no man, no living being, could destroy or injure. 
Its name was pa’-teh, from which it would seem to have been related to the 
panther, pat'-ta. 
Their language is like the Kabinapek phonetically, even more harsh and 
difficult. It is full of hissing sounds, and at times there occurs a kind of 
click, apparently like that in certain African languages, produced by the 
tongue against the roof of the mouth Sometimes a word is preceded both 
by a hissing and a click—a combinatiou almost impossible for an American 
to imitate. 
They construct cabins of slender willow poles set upright in the ground, 
with others crossing them horizontally, forming a square lattice-work. In the 
season of fish-drying each one of these apertures, hundreds in number, has 
a fish stuck in it—a singular spectacle. Wild fowl are slain by means of 
bullets of hard-baked clay projected from a sling, which they handle with 
great dexterity. They construct boats of tule, with indifferent skill. First, 
two or three long tule-stalks are sewed together for a keel, and hammered 
hard. Then others are laid alongside of them, each one overlapping the last 
a little in length, sewed on and beaten. When finished the bottom is twenty 
or thirty feet long, elliptical in shape, sharp at the ends, three or four layers of 
tule thick, and all hammered hard and water-tight. The sides are then 
