QUEEN CHARLOTTE ISLANDS. 169 B 



At the entrance to Cumshewa Inlet, on the opposite or south side, is skedans village 

 the Skedans village, so called, as in former cases, from the chief, but of 

 which I did not learn the proper name.* This is a place of more 

 importance than the Cumshewa village proper, and appears always 

 to have been so. Many of the houses are still inhabited, but most look 

 old and moss-grown, and the carved posts have the same aspect. Of 

 houses there are now about sixteen, of posts forty-four. At the time 

 of our visit, an old woman Avas having a new post erected in memory 

 of a daughter who had died some years before in Victoria. The 

 mother having amassed considerable property for the purpose, was 

 prepared to make a distribution when the post had been fairly put up. 

 The village borders the shore of a semicircular bay, which forms one 

 side of a narrow, shingly neck of land connecting two remarkable little 

 conical hills with the main. 



Kliie's Village, properly called Tanoo, or by the Tshimsians JOax-sklk, Klue village, 

 is situated fourteen miles southward from the last, on the outer side of 

 the inner of two exposed islands. The channel between the islands is 

 so open as to aiford little shelter, while the neighbourhood of the 

 village is very rocky, and must be dangerous of approach in bad 

 weather. There are about thirty carved posts here, of all heights and 

 styles, with sixteen houses. The village, extending round a little 

 rocky point, faces two ways, and cannot easily be wholly seen from 

 any one point of view, which causes it to look less important than the 

 last, though really possessing a larger population than it, and being in 

 a more flourishing state than any elsewhere seen in the islands. There 

 were a considerable number of strangers here at the time of our visit 

 in July, 18*78, engaged in the erection of a carved post and house for 

 the chief. The nights are given to dancing, while sleep and gambling 

 divided the portions of the day which were not employed in the 

 business in hand. Cedar planks of. great size, hewn out long ago in 

 anticipation, had been towed to the spot, and were now being dragged 

 up the beach by the united efforts of the throng, dressed for the most 

 part in gaily-coloured blankets. They harnessed themselves in clusters 

 to the ropes, as the Egyptians are represented to have done, in their 

 pictures, shouting and ye-hooing in strange tones to encourage 

 themselves in the work. 



The Kun-xit Village is the most southern in the Queen Charlotte ^instance 

 Islands. It is generally known as JSTiustance or jSTin-stints. from the 

 name of the chief, and is situated on the inner side of Anthony Island 

 of the Admiralty sketch of Houston Stewart Channel. The villages 

 marked as occurine- in Houston Stewart Channel, on the same sketch, 



Mr. J. G, Swan inccdentally refers to it as Koona, p. 5, op. cit. 



