ON THE ETHNOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 495 



steaming and soaking give a certain degree of elasticity to the cedar, 

 and prevent the thin sides of the canoe from splitting or cracking under 

 the strain of the spreading. The sides are kept apart and in the proper 

 position by fixed narrow thwarts. The native canoe-builder knows to a 

 nicety just what convexity and concavity to allow respectively to the 

 sides and bottom in every instance, and rarely errs in his calculations. 

 Not every Indian is a canoe builder of the first order, the art requiring 

 nice judgment and an experienced eye, and our admiration may well 

 be excited by the ingenious method the canoe-builders adopt in over- 

 coming the difficulties imposed upon them by the narrowness of the 

 log. Tn the hollowing out of the log the canoe-builder again shows his 

 skill and nice judgment. The thickness of the sides and bottom of a 

 canoe is generally under an inch. To the onlooker nothing seems easier 

 than to miscalculate this thickness, and pare off too much or too little 

 in places. Yet the native canoe-builder never does this, but chips out 

 his canoe as uniformly as if it had been turned out of a mould, his only 

 aid being his finger-tips. He feels the sides and bottom from time to 

 time as he goes along by the tips of his fingers, placing a hand on each 

 side of his work. By this means he can tell to a nicety the exact thick- 

 ness of the shell. The Sk-qo'mic have five different canoes, each called 

 by a special tei'm. One at least of these, the Chinook canoe, is a 

 borrowed form. I cannot say if the others originated with themselves. 

 They have of late years added a sixth to their number. This new one is 

 a racing canoe, built on the lines of our four-oared outrigger. I saw 

 one of these at the Mission across Burrard Inlet, the beautiful, graceful 

 lines of which would do no discredit to a first-class yacht-builder. It 

 was hollowed from a cedar log in the usual way, and outrigged 

 like a regular shell, and was altogether a splendid piece of native 

 workmanship. 



LINGUISTICS. 



The following notes on the languages of the Sk.-qo'mic will be the more welcome 

 inasmuch as they constitute the tirst serious attempt, as far as the writer has been 

 able to learn, to give the peculiarities of the structure of this dialect. While the 

 Sk-qo'mic possesses many of the characteristics common to the Salish tongue, its 

 dialectal differences are so many and great as to mark it off into a distinct class of 

 its own. It shows resemblance to both the Alkome'lEm dialects of the Lower Fraser 

 on the one hand and to the dialects of the tribes of the interior on the other, but is 

 quite distinct from any of these, and possesses a grammatical formation, character, 

 and vocabulary whuUy its own, which renders it impossible for its speakers to hold 

 extended converse with the neighbouring tribes without the aid of the trade jargon. 

 Though my studies of this tongue have extended more or less over the whole period 

 of my residence in these parts, it is only during the past year that I liave given any- 

 thing like connected thought to the work. Having found an intelligent helper this 

 spring in my studies in the person of a half-breed named Annie Carrasco, I have 

 taken advantage of her assistance to gather a fairly extensive list of phrases and 

 sentences illustrative of the laws aiid structure of the language. From these and 

 from the story of the SmailEtl, which I have written in the original Sk-qo'mic, a fair 

 knowledge of this dialect may now, with the aid of my notes, be obtained. 



My method of working was to supplement the services of Mrs. Carrasco with 

 those of one or more full-blooded Sk-qo'mic. These were generally a woman named 

 Annie Kivers and Chief Thomas of Kuk-aios. My notes, therefore, will, I trust, be 

 free from those errors which sometimes creep into our studies of the native tongues 

 when only the services of half-breeds, with limited and imperfect knowledge of the 

 language, are employed. There are many ways of expressing the same thoughts 

 and ideas in Sk-qo'mic as in other torgues. 1 have, however, in my grammar notes 

 Bought to record at all times the correct or ' classic ' formsi ColloquiallsmB and 



