BARITEST HISTORICAL TINE S:

wife in memory of his late brother. Messengers were sent
who brought her back, and thenceforth she attended upon
Chichanit, as was usual with widows preparatory to their
being re-married to their late husband’s nearest kin.

Meanwhile, Na’kwcoel was constantly smarting under the
pain caused by the untimely death of his eldest son.
Though he was now well advanced in years, he used to
visit Chichanit’s lodge and reproach Chalh’tas with her
crime, in which case blows would generally follow words,
to all of which she had to submit with as much equa-
nimity as her own haughty nature would allow.

One day, when she was unravelling with a small stone
knife the strips of willow bark, the filaments of which were
intended as the material of a fish net, her father-in-law
became so violent that, unable to stand his abuse any
longer, she grabbed him by the hair, and, throwing him to
the ground, stabbed him in the neck with her diminutive
implement. Fortunately for her intended victim, her knife
broke in the old man’s collar-bone before it could inflict
serious injury, whereupon Na’kweel called for help in
terms which are still recited for the sake of their quaint-
ness, and his son, running to his assistance, killed the
woman with his bow-point.

Na’kweel was now aging considerably. After many
years passed in the company of his only remaining son,
he grew to be so old that, according to tradition and the
accounts of eye-witnesses, his hair, after having been snow
white, had become of a yellowish hue. He fell into such
a state of decrepitude that his knees and elbows were
covered with scaly excrescences, resembling a sort of para-
sitic moss. His hearing failed him, and his eyelids drooped
until he became the very picture of old age. Basking in
the sun on a rock emerging from the shallow water, which
is still shown near the outlet of Lake Stuart, he wouid at

nS