ing in ingenuity. Their houses are well formed of logs of small
trees; buttressed up internally, frequently above seventy feet long and
fifteen high, but, unlike those of the coast, the roof is of bark: their
winter habitations are smaller, and often covered over with grass and
earth: some even dwell in excavations of the ground, which have only an
aperture at the top, and serves alike for door and chimney. Salmon,
deer, bears, and wild-fowl are their principal food: of the latter they
procure large quantities.

Their mode of taking salmon is curious. They build a weir across the
stream, having an opening only in one place, at which they fix a basket,
three feet in diameter, with the mouth made something like an eel-trap,
through which alone the fish can find a passage. On the side of this
basket is a hole, to which is attached a smaller basket, into which the
fish pass from the large one, and cannot return or escape. This, when
filled, is taken up without disturbing the larger one.

Of the religion and superstitions of the Indians little need be said;
the features of polytheism being everywhere as similar as its effects.
Impudent conjurers are their priests and teachers, and exerted once
unlimited sway; but under the satisfactory proofs of the value of
scientific medical practice and the tuition of the missionaries, it is
to be hoped both their claims to respect will be negatived; and as they
have evinced great aptitude to embrace and profit by instruction, it may
perhaps happen that secular knowledge may combine with religious to save
them from the apparent necessary result.

In closing this brief account of the gold-fields of New Caledonia, we
cannot avoid adverting to the great event which, has been, we may say,
contemporaneous with these discoveries--the laying down of the Atlantic
telegraph. The sources of an apparently boundless and dazzling wealth
have been opened up in the Far West of America, and a mighty stream of
thought has begun its perpetual flow backwards and forwards between her
eastern shores and England. We hail the coincidence as an assurance
that friendly communication, and peace, and good-will, shall go hand and
hand with the getting of gold in, and the civilising of, these far off
regions; and we believe that God will use both these new and mighty
engines for the advancement of the blessed gospel of our Lord Jesus
Christ in the British possessions of North America.

APPENDIX.

CORR