By this Cook knew the
people were cannibals. Some were observed to be wearing spoons of
European make as ornaments round their necks. What we desire to
believe we easily accept. The white men did not ascribe the spoons to
traders from New Spain on the south, or the Russian settlements to the
north; but thought this place must be within trading distance of Hudson
Bay, whence the Indians must have obtained the spoons. And so they
cherished the hope of a Northeast Passage from this slim sign. In a
few days fifteen hundred beaver and sea-otter had been obtained in
trade, sixty-nine sea-otter--each of which was worth at that time one
hundred dollars in modern money--for a handful of old nails.

To these deep-sea wanderers of Cook's crews, the harbor was as a
fairy-land. Snow still covered the mountain tops; but a tangled forest
of dank growth with roots awash in the ripple of the sea, stretched
down the hillsides. Red cedar, spruce, fir,--of enormous growth,
broader in girth than a cart and {188} wagon in length,--cypress with
twisted and gnarled knots red against the rank green; mosses swinging
from branch to branch in snaky coils wherever the clouds settled and
rested; islands studding the sea like emerald gems; grouse drumming
their spring song through the dark underbrush; sea-mew and Mother
Carey's chickens screaming and clacking overhead; the snowy summits red
as wine in the sunset glow--all made up an April scene long cherished
by these adventurers of the North.

Early one morning in April the men cutting timber inland were startled
to notice the underbrush alive with warriors armed. The first fear was
of an ambush. Cook ordered the men to an isolated rock ready for
defence; but the grand _tyee_ or chief explained by signs that his
tribe was only keeping off another tribe that wanted to trade with the
white men. The worst trouble was from the inordinate thieving
propensities of the natives. Iron, nails, belaying pins, rudders,
anchors, bits of sail, a spike that could be pulled from the rotten
wood of the outer keel by the teeth of a thief paddling
below--anything, everything was snatched by the light-fingered gentry.
Nor can we condemn them for it. Their moral standard was the Wolf Code
of Existence--which the white man has elaborated in his evolution--to
take whatever they had the dexterity and strength to take and to keep.
When caught in theft, they did not betray as much sense of guilt as a
dog stea