o the area that lies
between the present cities of Vancouver and New Westminster. But
long before he reached the shores of Deer Lake he discovered that
the beckoning hand was in reality flame. The little body of water
was surrounded by forest fires. One avenue alone stood open. It
was a group of giant trees that as yet the flames had not reached.
As he neared the point he saw a great moving mass of living things
leaving the lake and hurrying northward through this one egress. He
stood, listening, intently watching with alert eyes; the zwirr of
myriads of little travelling feet caught his quick ear--the moving
mass was an immense colony of beaver. Thousands upon thousands
of them. Scores of baby beavers staggered along, following their
mothers; scores of older beavers that had felled trees and built
dams through many seasons; a countless army of trekking fur-bearers,
all under the generalship of a wise old leader, who, as king of the
colony, advanced some few yards ahead of his battalions. Out of
the waters through the forest towards the country to the north they
journeyed. Wandering hunters said they saw them cross Burrard Inlet
at the Second Narrows, heading inland as they reached the farther
shore. But where that mighty army of royal little Canadians set
up their new colony no man knows. Not even the astuteness of the
first Capilano ever discovered their destination. Only one thing
was certain: Deer Lake knew them no more.

After their passing the Indian retraced their trail to the water's
edge. In the red glare of the encircling fires he saw what he at
first thought was some dead and dethroned king beaver on the shore.
A huge carcass lay half in, half out, of the lake. Approaching
it, he saw the wasted body of a giant seal. There could never be
two seals of that marvellous size. His intuition now grasped the
meaning of the omen of the beckoning flame that had called him from
the far coasts of Point Grey. He stooped above his dead conqueror
and found, embedded in its decaying flesh, the elk-bone spear of
his forefathers, and, trailing away at the water's rim, was a long,
flexible, cedar-fibre rope.

As he extracted this treasured heirloom he felt the "power," that
men of magic possess, creep up his sinewy arms. It entered his
heart, his blood, his brain. For a long time he sat and chanted
songs that only great medicine-men may sing, and, as the hours
drifted by, the heat of the forest fires subsi