478 THE BELLA COOLA INDIANS

night when they had assembled, the wanderer told about his adventures
and the desires of his friends, the fish, who were waiting in the river.
Maqwénts and her kinsfolk were delighted with the lovely wife her son
had brought home. Next morning the people threw into the river large
quantities of mountain goat grease, eagle feathers, and cedar-bark, which
the salmon gladly received.

Maqwénts’s son told his father that if anyone made his children cry
his merganser wife would leave him and never return. On this being
explained to the villagers, they all promised never to strike either of the
children on any account. Unluckily, the twins were mischievous, always
making other little boys and girls cry, but for three years no one raised a
finger against them. Then one day a bad boy struck one of the children
who ran home sobbing to his mother. She too wept when he came in;
when she told her husband that she must leave him, he also began to cry.
She took her two children, went to the river side, lifted the edge of the
water as ifit had been a mat and plunged beneathit. They all swam away
as salmon. Magwdnts’s son tried to follow, but failed because he had lost
his power of changing into a fish.

Since that time no salmon have lived among men.

FURTHER ADVENTURES OF THE SALMON-BOY

One day Magwénts’s son was playing on the beach with a sling, a toy
that used to be very popular. As he shot stone after stone out over the
water, he thought to himself how happy he should be if he happened to
hit and kill a salmon. Then he chanced to see a dead one lying on the
beach. It was nothing but skin and bones, but he said to it idly:

“I wish you were alive; then you would be of some use.”

To the intense surprise of Magwdnts’s son the salmon answered:

“Take me to the river and see what happens then.”

The lad picked up the salmon, carried it to the river and threw it in.
The fish swam around, jumped clear of the water four times and became
strong and well. It swam back to the shore and politely invited Ma-
qwants’s son to go for a ride on his back. The boy agreed. Lifting his
cedar-bark cape over his head he lay down on the salmon and sank his
face close against its back, so that his nose was in a kind of pocket, pro-
tected by the cape. Before long the rider feared he might suffocate, and
began to squirm, upon which the salmon hastily bore him to the shore to
breathe. He asked what was the trouble and the son of Magqwants re-
plied that he could not breathe under the water. The fish told him to
bury his head in the back fin and he would be all right. The rider obeyed
and suffered no further inconvenience.