93 
from fifteen to thirty persons, but had two disadvantages; first, 
water seeped in occasionally from the ground outside and no amount 
of lining with cedar bark could make the walls quite impermeable; 
secondly, no one could enter over the earth-covered roof without 
showering dirt on the inmates below. The houses were so warm that 
the natives occupied them in winter only, moving out at the be- 
ginning of spring into conical or rectangular lodges, covered with 
bark or brush, that closely resembled those of eastern Canada. 
The coast Indians of British Columbia, who differed in costume 
from all other tribes in Canada, differed also in their houses. 
The cedar trees that furnished so much of their dress, fur- 
20535 
Plank houses of the Coast Salish at Victoi ia, B.C, Potlatch in vn'ogress in the foreground. 
by R. Maynard.) 
nished also beams and planks of solid timber, from which the Salish 
tribes around the straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca, and the Nootka 
on the west coast of Vancouver island, built oblong dwellings of 
amazing size, several hundred feet long in some cases by fifty or sixty 
feet wide. Structurally they contained two parts, an inner frame and 
a detachable outer shell. The frame comprised two rows of oblong 
posts arranged parallel to each other at an interval equal to the 
breadth of the house, but with the posts of the front row slightly 
higher, or lower, ^ than those of the back. Eacli opposite pair sup- 
ported a rafter, and the rafters supported a gently sloping roof of 
1 The Xootka apparently made the front of the liouse lower, the Coast Salish, the back. There 
seems to have been nnu'h variety in house forms all aloii^ the Pacific coast, oven in a single village. 
