STORIES 501

goats talking in his own language and laughing together at his poor work-
manship in setting the traps. The following day he found that he had
caught nothing, but, heeding what he had heard the animals say, he
changed his nooses, and discovered next morning that he had secured a
large number. Thus he virtually became a shaman.

The people were in dire straits for food. Among other expedients
they tried to dip up salmon from the ocean, and when they failed, boiled
and drank instead the water where the fish had jumped, as it was thought
to be slightly flavoured. Even the clams and mussels were dead, so that
fern-roots and trout were the only dependable foods.

At this time there was living at Nuxw/st an unmarried woman with
a child, who like everyone else, was starving. She used to support herself
by hunting eels on the beach. One morning she saw a number of gulls
feeding on something, and, driving them off, she found that it was a
stranded porpoise. The woman returned for her basket and knife, cut
up the food and took it home to hide. A young orphan boy frequently
helped her to gather firewood, an onerous task because at this distant
period there were no trees, only stunted, grass-like bushes. One day the
lad came to her, starving, and she gave him food secretly. He returned
several times, and the people wondered where he derived his strength,
but no one was able to find out because she opened her store only at night
and hid it before morning.

ANOTHER ACCOUNT OF THE FAMINE

One year long ago there was famine. The warm weather did not come
to ripen the berries, and the rivers stayed so clear that no fish could be
caught, because they saw the net or fisherman. The people were starving
and went everywhere in search of food; many men wandered off to hunt
inunknown regions and no one knew how they died. Hunger drove many
persons to boil and drink water from the river where they had seen salmon
jumping in the hope that some savour of the fish might be left init. At
Stuux there lived a certain Qwaiutsamlaix, who had two children and a
very strong slave. Instead of ranging far afield, this man used to go a
short distance down the river below his house and spear trout to keep
himself alive. He usually fished at night, making torches of cedar-roots
which he had straightened for the purpose. Qwaiutsamlaix was tolerably
successful, more so than his neighbours, among whom was a woman whose
husband had starved to death; in her extremity she used to boil the
blood, scales, and refuse of the trout which she gleaned from his canoe.

One day Qwaiutsamlaix and his slave were near Tcumot?, making a
fish-dam. The workman was so strong that he had made two for his