er, then to
disappear. The slopes were next to slip into the sea. The world was
slowly being flooded. Hurriedly the Indian tribes gathered in one
spot, a place of safety far above the reach of the on-creeping sea.
The spot was the circling shore of Lake Beautiful, up the North Arm.
They held a Great Council and decided at once upon a plan of action. A
giant canoe should be built, and some means contrived to anchor it in
case the waters mounted to the heights. The men undertook the canoe,
the women the anchorage.

"A giant tree was felled, and day and night the men toiled over its
construction into the most stupendous canoe the world has ever known.
Not an hour, not a moment, but many worked, while the toil-wearied ones
slept, only to awake to renewed toil. Meanwhile the women also worked
at a cable--the largest, the longest, the strongest that Indian hands
and teeth had ever made. Scores of them gathered and prepared the
cedar fibre; scores of them plaited, rolled and seasoned it; scores of
them chewed upon it inch by inch to make it pliable; scores of them
oiled and worked, oiled and worked, oiled and worked it into a
sea-resisting fabric. And still the sea crept up, and up, and up. It
was the last day; hope of life for the tribe, of land for the world,
was doomed. Strong hands, self-sacrificing hands fastened the cable
the women had made--one end to the giant canoe, the other about an
enormous boulder, a vast immovable rock as firm as the foundations of
the world--for might not the canoe with its priceless freight drift
out, far out, to sea, and when the water subsided might not this ship
of safety be leagues and leagues beyond the sight of land on the
storm-driven Pacific?

"Then with the bravest hearts that ever beat, noble hands lifted every
child of the tribe into this vast canoe; not one single baby was
overlooked. The canoe was stocked with food and fresh water, and
lastly, the ancient men and women of the race selected as guardians to
these children the bravest, most stalwart, handsomest young man of the
tribe, and the mother of the youngest baby in the camp--she was but a
girl of sixteen, her child but two weeks old; but she, too, was brave
and very beautiful. These two were placed, she at the bow of the canoe
to watch, he at the stern to guide, and all the little children crowded
between.

"And still the sea crept up, and up, and up. At the crest of the
bluffs about Lake Beautiful the doomed