22 SPORT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

large war canoes, three large boats some 46 feet in length,
each hollowed out of a single trunk. They were about
four and a half feet in breadth, had a prow six feet
high, and were beautifully made. Besides these large
canoes, he possessed several smaller ones. In the
days before the motor boat “Telegraph,” Shake’s
largest canoe was used a great deal by hunters and
others going up the Stickine to Telegraph Creek.
Some years later it was exhibited at the exhibition in
Seattle, and I have heard that finally it has been
fitted with a motor.

At last the motor boat arrived, and we had a busy
time packing our gear and getting it stowed away on
board, as we intended making a start about noon
next day.

The boat, which had been built that year, was about
25 feet long, and had a superstructure or cabin running
for nearly the whole of its length, so that the available
deck space consisted of a couple of square feet in the
bow and stern. The steering gear was mounted on
top of the cabin roof, and we spent most of the time
up there. Inside the cabin, and on each side of the
engine room partitions, ten bunks were fixed, six in
the fore part and four aft. With the crew we were
sixteen men all told, with a lot of dunnage and gear
besides, so it will be understood that we were packed
like the proverbial sardines.

It was not till about four o’clock in the afternoon
that we got started and we missed the tide, of course,
but soon we had rounded the point and set a course
up the coast till we reached the mouth of the Stickine,
which here is rather wide and full of large sand banks.

With the tide against us we made slow progress.