12 SPORT IN BRITISH COLUMBIA

While we were fishing I noticed another boat coming
past at some distance, and in it was an elderly lady
who had just hooked and was playing an enormous
salmon. I could now and then catch a glimpse of the
large dorsal fin above water. During my stay at
Campbell River this lady caught several salmon well
above fifty pounds in weight, and like most Americans
her one ambition was to hold the record.

Then one day my English friend, Mr. H., caught a
fish considerably bigger than the biggest fish yet caught
by the American lady, and her husband pawed over
the fish very carefully and examined it most minutely,
till it suddenly dawned on us that he thought my
friend had filled it up with sand to make it scale the
more! This certainly was a new dodge, to me at least,
but I gathered that it was sometimes practised in
the U.S.A.

I spent only a week here at Campbell River and had
very moderate luck, my biggest fish scaling only just
over thirty pounds.

Just across the Sound, and close to Cape Mudge,
was a small village peopled by Siwash Indians, and
one day I told my gaffer to row me across so that I
could have a look round.

The village consisted of one single row of large
box-like wooden houses facing the sea, and in front
were erected tall wooden poles with all kinds of curious
carvings representing animals, fishes, and birds, and
painted in vivid colours. These were the famous
“Totempoles,” which seem to have a kind of heraldic
meaning and refer to the history of the clan or tribe.
The Indians living along this coast have a typically
mongol cast of features and are dressed like the whites.