.

It was a never-to-be-forgotten banquet. We were seated on the lower
platform with our feet towards the fire, and before Muir and me were
placed huge washbowls of blue Hudson Bay ware. Before each of our native
attendants was placed a great carved wooden trough, holding about as
much as the washbowls. We had learned enough Indian etiquette to know
that at each course our respective vessels were to be filled full of
food, and we were expected to carry off what we could not devour. It was
indeed a "feast of fat things." The first course was what, for the
Indian, takes the place of bread among the whites,--dried salmon. It
was served, a whole washbowlful for each of us, with a dressing of
seal-grease. Muir and I adroitly manoeuvred so as to get our salmon
and seal-grease served separately; for our stomachs had not been
sufficiently trained to endure that rancid grease. This course finished,
what was left was dumped into receptacles in our canoe and guarded from
the dogs by young men especially appointed for that purpose. Our
washbowls were cleansed and the second course brought on. This consisted
of the back fat of the deer, great, long hunks of it, served with a
gravy of seal-grease. The third course was little Russian potatoes about
the size of walnuts, dished out to us, a washbowlful, with a dressing of
seal-grease. The final course was the only berry then in season, the
long fleshy apple of the wild rose mellowed with frost, served to us in
the usual quantity with the invariable sauce of seal-grease.

"Mon, mon!" said Muir aside to me, "I'm fashed we'll be floppin' aboot
i' the sea, whiles, wi' flippers an' forked tails."

When we had partaken of as much of this feast of fat things as our
civilized stomachs would stand, it was suddenly announced that we were
about to receive a visit from the great chief of the Chilcats and the
Chilcoots, old Chief Shathitch (Hard-to-Kill). In order to properly
receive His Majesty, Muir and I and our two chiefs were each given a
whole bale of Hudson Bay blankets for a couch. Shathitch made us wait a
long time, doubtless to impress us with his dignity as supreme chief.

The heat of the fire after the wind and cold of the day made us very
drowsy. We fought off sleep, however, and at last in came stalking the
biggest chief of all Alaska, clothed in his robe of state, which was an
elegant chinchilla blanket; and upon its yellow surface, as the chief
slowly turned about to show us what