Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/66

40 high and thence rising in a wide sweeping park clad in thick turf, and dotted here and there with beautiful spruce and fir trees, to an elevation of twenty-five hundred feet, the sacred Nekahni presents as fine a combination of the beautiful and sublime as can be seen upon a whole thousand miles of coast. It was a favourite spot with the natives. For lying upon its open and turfy slopes they could gaze upon many miles of sea, and could no doubt light up their signal fires which might be seen over a wide expanse of beach. Very likely there, too, they celebrated the mysterious rites of Nekahni and Tallapus.

One pleasant afternoon in early summer, a large group of natives assembled upon the lower part of Nekahni, almost upon the edge of the precipitous cliff with which it fronts the sea. Gazing into the offing they saw a great object like a huge bird drawing near from the outer sea. It approached the shore, and then from it a small boat with a number of men and a large black box put out to land. Coming to the beach the men took out the box and also a black man whom the Indians supposed to be a spook or evil demon. Going a little way up the beach the men dug a hole into which they lowered the box, and then having struck down the black man they threw him on top of the box and, covering it up, they returned to the ship, which soon disappeared from sight. On account of the black man buried with the box, the superstitious Indians dared not undertake to exhume the contents of the grave. But the story was handed from one generation to another, and it came to constitute the story of the “treasure ship.”

In recent times the idea that here some chest, with