Or THE OLD AND NEW WO ELD. 335 



ship, and are faithful copies, not distorted caricatures, from nature. 

 So far as fidelity is concerned, many of them deserve to rank by the 

 side of the best efforts of the artist-naturalists of our own day."* 



This descriptive comparison with the arts of the Indians of the 

 north-west coast is based, as the illustrations given here (Plates 

 II. and III.) suffice to show, on deductions drawn from the examina- 

 tion of specimens very different from those which have been brought 

 from the same localities, or investigated in the hands of the native 

 sculptors, and obviously constitute the true illustrations of Indian 

 skill and artistic design. In addition to these, however, among the 

 varied collection of Indian relics brought by Mr. Kane from the 

 north-west coast, there is one of the ingenious examples of imitative 

 skill referred to by Mr. Scarier, which was procured on Vancouver's 

 Island. But while this exhibits evidence of the same skillful 

 dexterity as the other carvings in the blue pipe-slate of the Clalam 

 and Babeen Indians, it presents the most striking contrast to them, 

 alike in design and style of art. It has a regular bowl, imitated 

 from that of a common clay pipe, and is decorated with twisted ropes, 

 part of a ship's bulkhead, and other objects — including even the 

 head of a screw-nail, — all equally familiar to us, but which no doubt 

 attracted the eye of the native artist from their novelty. Very 

 different from this are the genuine native pipes. They are composed 

 of varied and elaborate devices, including human figures, some of 

 them with birds' and beasts' heads, and frequently presenting con- 

 siderable accuracy of imitative skill. The frog is a favourite subject, 

 represented generally of the same size as the accompanying human 

 figures, but with a very spirited and life-like verisimilitude. In some 

 of the larger pipes, the entire group presents much of the grotesque 

 exuberance of fancy, mingled with imitations borrowed direct 

 from nature, Avhich constitute the charm of the Gothic ecclesiastical 

 sculptures of the thirteenth century. The figures are grouped 

 together in the oddest varieties of posture, and ingeniously interlaced, 

 and connected by elaborate ornaments ; the intermediate spaces being 

 perforated, so as to give great lightness of appearance to the 

 whole. But though well calculated to recall the quaint products of 

 the medieval sculptor's chisel, so far are these Babeen carvings from 

 suggesting the slightest resemblance to European models, that when 

 first examining them, as well as specimens in bone and ivory from 

 the same locality, — and still more so, some ivory carvings executed 

 by the Tawatin Indians on Frazer River. — I was struck with certain 



* Monuments of the Mississippi Valley, p. 272. 



