hern edge,
looking towards what is now the great city of Vancouver. Both
factions danced, chanted, burned their magic powders, built their
magic fires, beat their magic rattles, but neither would give way,
yet neither conquered. About them, on the waters, on the mainlands,
raged the warfare of their respective tribes--the Sagalie Tyee had
forgotten His Indian children.

"After many months, the warriors on both sides weakened. They said
the incantations of the rival medicine-men were bewitching them,
were making their hearts like children's, and their arms nerveless
as women's. So friend and foe arose as one man and drove the
medicine-men from the island, hounded them down the Inlet, herded
them through the Narrows, and banished them out to sea, where they
took refuge on one of the outer islands of the gulf. Then the
tribes once more fell upon each other in battle.

"The warrior blood of the North will always conquer. They are
the stronger, bolder, more alert, more keen. The snows and the
ice of their country make swifter pulse than the sleepy suns of
the South can awake in a man; their muscles are of sterner stuff,
their endurance greater. Yes, the northern tribes will always be
victors.* But the craft and the strategy of the southern tribes
are hard things to battle against. While those of the North
followed the medicine-men farther out to sea to make sure of their
banishment, those from the South returned under cover of night and
seized the women and children and the old, enfeebled men in their
enemy's camp, transported them all to the Island of Dead Men, and
there held them as captives. Their war-canoes circled the island
like a fortification, through which drifted the sobs of the
imprisoned women, the mutterings of the aged men, the wail of
little children.

* Note.--It would almost seem that the chief knew that wonderful poem
of "The Khan's," "The Men of the Northern Zone," wherein he says:

If ever a Northman lost a throne
Did the conqueror come from the South?
Nay, the North shall ever be free ... etc.

"Again and again the men of the North assailed that circle of
canoes, and again and again were repulsed. The air was thick with
poisoned arrows, the water stained with blood. But day by day the
circle of southern canoes grew thinner and thinner; the northern
arrows were telling, and truer of aim. Canoes drifted everywhere,
empty, or, worse still, manned only by dead men. The pick of