dicine-songs, he entered his canoe and paddled
through the colors of the setting sun far up the North Arm. When
night fell he came to an island with misty shores of great grey
rock; on its summit tall pines and firs encircled like a king's
crown. As he neared it he felt all his strength, his courage, his
fearlessness, leaving him; he could see these things drift from
him on to the island. They were as the clouds that rest on the
mountains, grey-white and half transparent. Weak as a woman, he
paddled back to the Indian village; he told them to go and search
for 'The Island,' where they would find all his courage, his
fearlessness and his strength, living, living forever. He slept
then, but--in the morning he did not awake. Since then our young
men and our old have searched for 'The Island.' It is there
somewhere, up some lost channel, but we cannot find it. When we
do, we will get back all the courage and bravery we had before the
white man came, for the great medicine-man said those things never
die--they live for one's children and grandchildren."

His voice ceased. My whole heart went out to him in his longing
for the lost island. I thought of all the splendid courage I knew
him to possess, so made answer: "But you say that the shadow of
this island has fallen upon you; is it not so, tillicum?"

"Yes," he said half mournfully. "But only the shadow."

POINT GREY

"Have you ever sailed around Point Grey?" asked a young Squamish
tillicum of mine who often comes to see me, to share a cup of
tea and a taste of muck-a-muck that otherwise I should eat in
solitude.

"No," I admitted, I had not had that pleasure, for I did not know
the uncertain waters of English Bay sufficiently well to venture
about its headlands in my frail canoe.

"Some day, perhaps next summer, I'll take you there in a sail-boat,
and show you the big rock at the south-west of the Point. It is a
strange rock; we Indian people call it Homolsom."

"What an odd name!" I commented. "Is it a Squamish word?--it does
not sound to me like one."

"It is not altogether Squamish, but half Fraser River language. The
Point was the dividing-line between the grounds and waters of the
two tribes; so they agreed to make the name 'Homolsom' from the two
languages."

I suggested more tea, and, as he sipped it, he told me the legend
that few of the younger Indians know. That he believes the story
himself is beyond question, for many times