10 THEHAIDAHINDIANSOP 



attained only by a long residence and observation among these Indians. The im- 

 pressions of casual travellers are not always reliable, nor are the interpreters who 

 generally accompany scientific expeditions always capable of understanding cor- 

 rectly what they are required to translate. 



It is interesting to read the reports and observations of the early voyages of 

 Cook, La Perouse, Portlock and Dixon, Marchand, and others who have visited 

 Queen Charlotte's Island, and see how little they really knew or understood about 

 these natives. 



The best account that I have seen, and that is but a meagre one, is in Mar- 

 chand's Voyage Round the World, performed during the years 1770 '71, '72, 

 in the " Solidc," a ship fitted out in France for the purpose of trading on the 

 Northwest coast of America. But Marchand and all the other early voyagers 

 labored under a very great difficulty ; they did not understand the language of the 

 natives, and their only means of intercourse was by signs. Hence we find the 

 accounts of the voyages of every nation, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English, 

 full of theories, and scarce any two alike. When the narrators confine themselves 

 to descriptions of things which they saw, such as the dwellings, carvings, canoes, 

 and other manufactures, and the usual appearance of the natives, their accounts 

 generally agree ; but when they commence to form hypotheses on imaginary mean- 

 ings of the things they saw, they are lamentably at fault. 



The following description of a house at Cloak Bay, on North Island, the most 

 northerly island of the group, gives a general idea of a Haidah house of the pre- 

 sent day. I quote from Marchand: — 



"The form of these habitations is that of a regular parallelogram, from forty- 

 five to fifty feet in front, by thirty-five in depth. Six, eight, or ten posts, cut and 

 planted in the ground on each front, form the enclosure of a habitation, and are 

 fastened together by planks ten inches in width, by three or four in thickness, 

 which are solidly joined to the posts by tenons and mortises; the enclosures, six or 

 seven feet high, are surmounted by a roof, a little sloped, the summit of which is 

 raised from ten to twelve feet above the ground. These enclosures and the roofing 

 are faced with planks, each of which is about two feet wide. In the middle of the 

 roof is made a large square opening, which aff'ords, at once, both entrance to the 

 light, and issue to the smoke. There are also a few small windows open on the 

 sides. These houses have two stories, although one only is visible, the second is 

 under ground, or rather its upper part or ceiling is even Avith the surface of the 

 place in which the posts are driven. It consists of a cellar about five feet in depth, 

 dug in the inside of the habitation, at the distance of six feet from the walls 

 throughout the whole of the circumference. The descent to it is by three or four 

 steps made in the platform of earth which is reserved between the foundations of 

 the walls and the cellar; and these steps of earth well beaten, are cased with 

 planks which prevent the soil from falling in. Beams laid across, and covered 

 with thick planks, form the upper floor of this subterraneous story, which preserves 

 from moisture the upper story, whose floor is on a level with the ground. This 

 cellar is the winter habitation." 



The entrance door of their edifices is thus described : — 



