THE INDIANS OF CAPE FLATTERY. 89 



animals, and the Indian, taking advantage of this, is enabled to kiU as many as he 

 can reach. But this is an exploit attended with great danger, for occasionally 

 the torch will go out, and leave the cavern in the profoundest darkness. At such 

 times the cries of the seals, mingled with the roar of the billows as it echoes 

 through the caves, inspire the Indian with a mortal terror ; and should he escape 

 with his life, he wiU have most fearful tales to relate of the dark doings and still 

 darker and mysterious sayings of the beings who are believed to inhabit these 

 caverns and dens of the earth, and who being angry because their secret retreats 

 were invaded, blew out the torch, aiid filled the air with the horrid sounds he 

 heard. It is, however, but seldom that the usually turbulent waters in the vicinity 

 of the cape are quiet enough to permit of such expeditions. 



The craggy sides of the perpendicular cliffs afford resting places for numerous 

 sea fowl, particularly the violet-green cormorant, which here builds its nest where- 

 ever it can find a hole left by some pebble or boulder fallen from the cliff, or 

 where it can scratch or burroAV into any loose soil that may form the summit. Har- 

 lequin ducks, mokes, guillemots, petrels and gulls abound, and during the breed- 

 ing season the air is filled with their discordant cries. These birds are all 

 considered as departed Indians, and the cries they utter in an approaching storm, 

 are supposed to be warnings of dead friends not to venture around the cape till it 

 shall have abated. 



LichenS' and moss collect on the sides of the clifi's above the direct action of the 

 waves, and where the tides reach, the rocks are covered with barnacles and 

 mussels, or else entirely hidden by sea-weeds which grow in rich profusion. In 

 some places there are beds of clay slate in the conglomerate which have been 

 bored full of holes by the borer clam [Parapliolas), and present a singular 

 appearance; elsewhere they are the resting places of a great variety of star- 

 fish, sea slugs, limpets, etc. Some of these to the Indian mind 'are great medi- 

 cines, others of them are noxious, and some are used for food. The jutting pro- 

 montories, the rocky islets, and detached boulders, the caverns and archways 

 about the Cape have all some incident or legend, and in one large cave, opposite 

 Tatoosh Island where the breakers make an unusual sound, which becomes fearful 

 on the approaching of a storm, they think a demon lives, who, coming forth during 

 the tempest, seizes upon any canoes that may be so unfortunate as to pass at the 

 time, and takes them and their crews into the cave, from whence they issue forth 

 as birds or animals, but never again in human shape. The grandeur of the scenery 

 about Cape Flattery, and the strange contortions and fantastic shapes into which 

 its cliffs have been thrown by some former convulsion of nature, or worn and 

 abraded by the ceaseless surge of the waves ; the wild and varied sounds which fill 

 the air, from the dash of water into the caverns and fissures of the rocks, 

 mingled with the living cries of innumerable fowl, the great waves of the ocean 

 coming in with majestic roll and seemingly irresistible force, yet broken into foam, 

 or thrown into the air in jets of spray, all combined, present an accumulation, 

 of sights and sounds sufficient to fill a less superstitious beholder than the Indian 

 with mysterious awe. 



The astronomical and meteorological ideas of the Makahs are wrapped in vague 



12 December, 1860. 



