their very long
poles thirty or forty splendid fish in an hour; there at a small
cascade, in great baskets sunk into the water, a couple of Indians
caught and killed the salmon that, in trying to leap the fall, plumped
into the wicker cage; beyond, others, more idle and less enterprising,
speared the finny travellers, thus five hundred miles from home--the
brave Pacific.

Upon the banks the cleaning and curing went on, the women and children
assisting, and as the Indians and half-breeds worked they sang either
the wild Indian melodies, snatches of brave old songs of the 'voyageurs'
of a past century, or hymns taught by the Jesuit missionaries in the
persons of such noble men as Pere Lacombe and Pere Durieu, who have
wandered up and down the vast plains of both sides of the Rockies
telling an old story in a picturesque, heroic way. These old hymns were
written in Chinook, that strange language,--French, English, Spanish,
Indian, arranged by the Hudson's Bay Company, which is, like the
wampum-belt, a common tongue for tribes and peoples not speaking any
language but their own. They were set to old airs--lullabies, chansons,
barcarolles, serenades, taken out of the folk-lore of many lands. Time
and again had these simple arcadian airs been sung as a prelude to some
tribal act that would not bear the search-light of civilisation--little
by the Indians east of the Rockies, for they have hard hearts and fierce
tongues, but much by the Shuswaps, Siwashes, and other tribes of the
Pacific slope, whose natures are for peace more than for war; who, one
antique day, drifted across from Japan or the Corea, and never, even in
their wild, nomadic state, forgot their skill and craft in wood and gold
and silver.

We sat on the shore and watched the scene for a time, saying nothing.
Now and again, as from scaffolding to scaffolding, from boat to boat,
and from house to house, the Chinook song rang and was caught up in a
slow monotone, so not interfering with the toil, there came the sound
of an Indian drum beaten indolently, or the rattle of dry hard sticks--a
fantastic accompaniment.

"Does it remind you of the South Seas?" I asked Mrs. Falchion, as, with
her chin on her hand, she watched the scene.

She drew herself up, almost with an effort, as though she had been lost
in thought, and looked at me curiously for a moment. She seemed trying
to call back her mind to consider my question. Presently she answered
me: "Very little. The