EELLS ON THE TWANA INDIANS. 61 



in Christian ideas ; learning more from example than from precept, but 

 in both ways. They hare had instruction in Christianity only about 

 four years, and in the other matters for fifteen years, which accounts partly 

 for the difference in regard to this. In almost all things, however, as 

 they see the superiority of the white man, they are ready for progress, 

 especially the younger ones ; the old ones being more conservative. 



PAET II.— SURROUNDINGS OR ENVIRONMENT. 

 A. — Inorganic. 



Outline and size of Territory — Elevation and Water-systems. — Reserva- 

 tion near the head of Hood's Canal on Puget Sound, in Washington 

 Territory, and at the mouth of the Skokomish River. It is nearly square, 

 and comprises about 5,000 acres; two-thirds of it but a few feet above 

 tide-water, the other third mountainous and several hundred feet high. 

 The Skokomish is the only river which, coming from the north in the 

 Olympic range of mountains, flows east on the south side of the reser- 

 vation and north on the east side, when it empties into Hood's Canal. 

 There are several sloughs running from the river to the canal across 

 the reservation. 



Geological environment, hotli stratigraphical and economic. — The strati- 

 graphical environment has not been thoroughly studied. Both lava 

 and granite evidently lie at the bottom ; the granite I think to be the 

 oldest. Since the granite, evidently there has been a long washing 

 either by salt-water or fresh, I do not know which, but presume it was 

 salt, as the upland is mostly a gravel-bed. As the sea then went down, 

 the river formed most of the soil good for cultivation. 



Economic. — The soil of about two-fifths of the reservation is black, 

 rich bottomland, very excellent for cultivation when cleared of the 

 timber which covers it. One-fifth of the laud is swampy, and 1,800 

 acres, nearly two-fifths, is gravelly and covered with fir timber, and is 

 almost useless except as timber-laud. 



Climate. — Chiefly a dry and wet season, as in Western Washington 

 and Oregon ; but little snow or cold weather generally during the win- 

 ter, but a large amount of rain, which continues at intervals during the 

 summer. The spring is generally backward, as the Olympic Mountains, 

 some of which are snow-capped most of the summer, are but twenty 

 miles distant to the north. Erosts in the fall generally not early, 

 €omiug from the 1st to the 25th of October usually. 



Remains of plants and animals found with relics of extinct tribes. — 

 There are two shell-beds, which as yet have not been opened, at Eneti, 

 on the reservation ; one is near the north line of the reservation, and is 

 about 450 feet long, from 3 to 20 wide, and a foot or two thick ; the 

 other, half a mile south of it, 300 feet long, and about the same width 

 and thickness. They are both just above high tide, andfare evidently 



