the second bride assigned to me, and her
husband the housekeeper to him; whilst the third
bride fell to the share of the coachman—a very
great dignitary in the household—and her
husband took the lady's-maid: had any lady
visitors been staying in the house, or had there
been any daughters in the family, they would
have taken the places of the housekeeper and
the lady's-maid. Herr Hillmann and I were
released after we had danced with the three
brides, but poor Frau Hillmann—who happened
to be a rather stout lady—had to perform
obligatory dances, not only with the three
bridegrooms, but also with the coachman, the
huntsman, and the miller! After their etiquette
dances, the brides were allowed to divest
themselves of their crowns, and then the dancing
commenced in good earnest. Besides the dances
of society, such as the Polka, the Galop, and
the Polka-Mazurka, they performed a variety of
national quadrilles, which were characterised
by much stamping of feet and clapping of hands
and frequent staccato yells of the men, and as
the night wore onward the brandy-kegs gradually
got emptier, every one introduced a " pas " and
variations of his own into the dance. One couple
especially received much applause from the
rest of the company, who left off dancing in
order to admire their performance. The dance
was a Polka-Mazurka, and at a certain bar in
the music the gentleman—one of the stable-
boys—lifted his partner, a particularly delicate-
looking, slender little dairymaid, clean off the
floor and high above his head into the air,
promptly setting her down again to go on in the
dance in perfect time with the music—all this
with the greatest ease of manner on both sides.
After this feat I left the dancers to retire to
rest—a rest that, until about four o'clock in the
morning, was every now and then broken by
the jolly shrieks of the men and the screams
of women's laughter.

A DAY WITH HOLIBUT.

"THE treasures of the ocean are greater than
those of the land." This assertion applies,
perhaps, with greater force and truthfulness to
the Pacific than to the Atlantic Ocean. Its
inexhaustible store, without any visible decrease,
and with only a trifling expenditure of labour,
supplies food, and even luxuries, to the numerous
natives tenanting the islands that everywhere
stud its vast expanse, as well as the
coasts washed by its blue waters.

It cannot be the result of mere chance that
human necessities, and the requisites to supply
them, are so wonderfully and admirably balanced!
Whales and seals, together with numerous oily
inhabitants of the sea, obeying a wise and
wonderful instinct, regularly visit the coasts and
island homes of the savage, and thus bring a
regular supply of heat-yielding matter. So
deep-sea fish, solid, substantial, and muscular,
in like manner, furnish material equally needed
to build up the thew and sinew required by the
native, to enable him to catch, subdue, and
secure these leviathans of the deep.

Of all the deep-sea fish the holibut is by far
the largest and strongest the savage has to
grapple with. Holibut fishing, as practised by
the Indians, in a canoe, on a dangerously rough,
sea, is a sport few have indulged in.

My story commences at Fort Rupert, a
trading post of the Hudson's Bay Company, at
the extreme end of Vancouver's Island; this
so-called fort is a depôt for trading, or, in
other words, bartering goods of various kinds
for peltries (fur skins simply sun dried) brought
for sale by Indian hunters to the fort. A large
colony of Indians live close by, in a village
composed of wood sheds, situated on a level
plateau overlooking a bay, or, more correctly, a
sheltered roadstead, named Beaver Harbour.
A regular fleet of canoes are generally to be
seen on the beach, of all sizes, from the war
canoe, capable of carrying thirty fighting men,
down to the shell, paddled by girls and boys.
I was the guest of the chief trader, and
having expressed a desire to witness holibut
fishing, it was arranged that my wishes should
be gratified, as soon as the requisite
negotiations could be carried out with the chiefs.
The morning of departure arrived, and as I
left the fort, and strolled down the slanting
beach towards the sea, a quaint assemblage of
disagreeable specimens of humanity preceded
me, in novel procession—savages of every age
and size, from the stalwart chief to the
waddling brat, all eyes and stomach.

A chief, particularly a white one, in savagedom
is great or little in an exact ratio to
the amount of pat-a-lech (a word equivalent to
the bak-sheish of Easterns) he pays or gives
for service rendered—being the trader's
guest, and the presents being deemed highly
satisfactory, of course the " Long Beard"—so
they styled me—was on the topmost pinnacle
of popularity.

A large canoe, manned by four savages, awaited
my arrival, and this being a special occasion, they
were more elaborately painted than is usual. A
brief description of one will serve to portray the
other three. Tailors are entirely unknown in
the land of the red-skin. A small piece of
blanket, or fur, tied round the waist, constitutes
the court, evening, and morning costume of both
chief and subject. My crew were killed with
pieces of scarlet blanket. Imagine, if you can,
a dark, swarthy, copper-coloured figure leaning
on a canoe paddle, his jet black hair hanging
down nearly to the middle of his back, the front
hair being clipped close in a straight line across
the forehead. Neither beard, whisker, nor
moustache ever adorns the face of the red-skin, the
hair being tweezered out by squaws in early life,
and thus destroyed. A line of vermilion extends
from the centre of the forehead to the tip of the
nose, and from this trunk line others radiate,
over and under the eyes and across the cheeks,
Between these red lines, white and blue streaks
alternately fill the interstices. A similar pattern
ornaments chest, arms, and back, the frescoing