e hundred pounds over the lowered
side of the canoe by a single effort. They catch whales also by means
of harpoons with bladders attached. The oil is sold to the Hudson's Bay
Company. It has been said that their houses were made of boards, but
some constructive art is displayed in their erection as was much
ingenuity in procuring the materials before axes were introduced among
them; for they contrived to fell trees with a rough chisel and mallet.
The houses are made of centre-posts about eighteen feet high, upon which
a long pole rests, forming the ridge of the roof, from whence rafters
descend to another like it, but not more than five feet from the ground;
to these again, cross poles are attached, and against these are placed
boards upright, and the lower end fixed in the ground; across these
again, poles are placed, and tied with cords of cedar bark to those
inside of the roof, which are similarly disposed: the planks are double.
These houses are divided on each side into stalls and pens, occupied as
sleeping places during the night, and the rafters serve to suspend the
fish, which are dried by the smoke in its lengthened course through the
interstices of the roof and walls. In their superstitions, theatricals,
dances, and songs they have much similarity to the natives of Polynesia.
Debased now, and degraded even beneath their former portrait--fast
fading away before the more genial sun of the fortunes of the White
man--the Indians on the southern coast are no longer free and warlike,
and being in subjection to the Hudson's Bay Company, English
manufactures are substituted for the efforts of their native industry.

The mode of burial practised among the tribes on the coast is very
peculiar. The corpse is placed sometimes in a canoe raised a few feet
from the ground, with arms and other necessaries beside it. These are
not unfrequently spoiled beforehand, to prevent their being stolen, as
if they thought they might, like their owner, be restored to their
former state in the new world. Sometimes they are put in upright boxes
like sentry-boxes--sometimes in small enclosures--but usually kept neat,
and those of the chiefs frequently painted. Mount Coffin, at the mouth
of the Cowelitz, seems to have been appropriated to the burial of
persons of importance; it is about seven hundred feet high, and quite
isolated: on it were to be seen the canoe-coffins of the natives in
every stage of decay; they were hung between