typical Northern sunset, and by
some happy chance I placed my deck-stool near an old tillicum, who
was leaning on the rail, his pipe between his thin, curved lips, his
brown hands clasped idly, his sombre eyes looking far out to sea,
as though they searched the future--or was it that they were seeing
the past?

"Kla-how-ya, tillicum!" I greeted.

He glanced round, and half smiled.

"Kla-how-ya, tillicum!" he replied, with the warmth of friendliness
I have always met with among the Pacific tribes.

I drew my deck-stool nearer to him, and he acknowledged the action
with another half smile, but did not stir from his entrenchment,
remaining as if hedged about with an inviolable fortress of
exclusiveness. Yet I knew that my Chinook salutation would be a
drawbridge by which I might hope to cross the moat into his castle
of silence.

Indian-like, he took his time before continuing the acquaintance.
Then he began in most excellent English:

"You do not know these northern waters?"

I shook my head.

After many moments he leaned forward, looking along the curve of
the deck, up the channels and narrows we were threading, to a
broad strip of waters off the port bow. Then he pointed with
that peculiar, thoroughly Indian gesture of the palm uppermost.

"Do you see it--over there? The small island? It rests on the
edge of the water, like a grey gull."

It took my unaccustomed eyes some moments to discern it; then all at
once I caught its outline, veiled in the mists of distance--grey,
cobwebby, dreamy.

"Yes," I replied, "I see it now. You will tell me of it--tillicum?"

He gave a swift glance at my dark skin, then nodded. "You are
one of us," he said, with evidently no thought of a possible
contradiction. "And you will understand, or I should not tell
you. You will not smile at the story, for you are one of us."

"I am one of you, and I shall understand," I answered.

It was a full half-hour before we neared the island, yet neither of
us spoke during that time; then, as the "grey gull" shaped itself
into rock and tree and crag, I noticed in the very centre a
stupendous pile of stone lifting itself skyward, without fissure or
cleft; but a peculiar haziness about the base made me peer narrowly
to catch the perfect outline.

"It is the 'Grey Archway,'" he explained, simply.

Only then did I grasp the singular formation before us: the rock
was a perfect archway, through which we could see the placid
Pacifi