the rear in a sharp
horizontal ridge by confining it between two boards, one running back
from the forehead at an angle of about forty degrees, and the other up
perpendicularly from the back of the neck. When a head had been
shaped artistically the dusky maiden owner was marked as a belle, and
one could become reconciled to it after a time, but when carelessness
and neglect had governed in the adjustment of the boards, there
probably was nothing in the form of a human being on the face of the
earth that appeared so ugly.

It was the mortuary ground of these Indians that occupied the only
level spot we could get for the block-house. Their dead were buried
in canoes, which rested in the crotches of forked sticks a few feet
above-ground. The graveyard was not large, containing probably from
forty to fifty canoes in a fair state of preservation. According to
the custom of all Indian tribes on the Pacific coast, when one of
their number died all his worldly effects were buried with him, so
that the canoes were filled with old clothes, blankets, pieces of
calico and the like, intended for the use of the departed in the
happy hunting grounds.

I made known to the Indians that we would have to take this piece of
ground for the blockhouse. They demurred at first, for there is
nothing more painful to an Indian than disturbing his dead, but they
finally consented to hold a council next day on the beach, and thus
come to some definite conclusion. Next morning they all assembled,
and we talked in the Chinook language all day long, until at last
they gave in, consenting, probably, as much because they could not
help themselves, as for any other reason. It was agreed that on the
following day at 12 o'clock, when the tide was going out, I should
take my men and place the canoes in the bay, and let them float out
on the tide across the ocean to the happy hunting-grounds:

At that day there existed in Oregon in vast numbers a species of
wood-rat, and our inspection of the graveyard showed that the canoes
were thickly infested with them. They were a light gray animal,
larger than the common gray squirrel, with beautiful bushy tails,
which made them strikingly resemble the squirrel, but in cunning and
deviltry they were much ahead of that quick-witted rodent. I have
known them to empty in one night a keg of spikes in the storehouse in
Yamhill, distributing them along the stringers of the building, with
apparently no other pur