Page:Early western travels, 1748-1846 (1907 Volume 7).djvu/118

 of broad, split cedar-planks, something in the European style, and covered with the bark of the same tree. They are sufficiently large and commodious to contain all the members of a numerous family, slaves included. At the top or ridge pole, an opening gives free passage to the smoke; they have one or more, according to the number of families in each. But I never saw more than four fires, or above eighty persons—slaves and all—in the largest house.

Towards the spring of the year, or as soon as the rainy season is over, all the Indians on the coast break up their winter quarters, and form large square sheds, for the purpose of drying and curing their fish, roots, and berries. Within this huge enclosure they then live in hordes, like so many cattle in a fold; but {99} these sheds are only for temporary purposes; and it must have been on some such occasion that Meares found Wickananish in his "household of 800 persons."[17] They migrate towards the interior sometimes for months together; war and traffic in slaves often call them to a distance; and this may account for the absence of inhabitants about Port Discovery and Desolation Sound when Vancouver was there.[18] But