are not fond of Americans, on account of the generally unjustifiable way they are treated both by the citizens and the Government of that nation. Englishmen, if known as such, are generally safe among them. An Indian, once describing to me the characteristics of the different people whom he knew, did so most naïvely: "King George men (English), very good; Boston man (American), good; John Chinaman, not good; but the black man, he is no better than a dog!" They are particularly insulted if a black man is placed over them in any way. They are not very certain whether the black goes all the way through; and some years ago a party of negroes escaping into Texas were captured by some of the Comanches, who scraped their skin and committed other cruelties upon them, with a view to settle this anatomical question. Many of their ideas about the whites are amusing, and not a little suggestive. Soldiers and sailors they look upon as a distinct people, for among a race where all are fighting men, they cannot understand why this duty should be delegated to a few individuals. The colonial bishop they regard as a great medicine-man or sorcerer. An Indian once asked me who was the chief of the English. I told him. "Ah! Queen Victoly" (for they cannot pronounce r). "Is she a woman?" "Yes." "Who is the chief of the Boston men (Americans)?" "Mr. Lincoln." "Ah! I thought so; but another Indian once told me it was Mr. Washington. Are Mr. Lincoln and the English woman-chief good friends?" "Yes, excellent friends." He thought for a moment, and finally said, eagerly, "Then if they are so good friends, why does not Mr. Lincoln take Queen Victoly for his squaw!" The colonists they do not look upon as having been very great men in their own country, and are shrewd enough to say, "They must have had no good land of their own, that they come here to deprive us of ours." That a man may work for wages, without. being a slave of his employer, they are only beginning to understand. I have heard them tell the foremen at saw-mills, that they know well enough that, big men as they were here, they were only slaves of some big chief elsewhere. Such is their dislike to continuous exertion that when working at saw-mills, they will, a few days before the end of their month's engagement, frequently forfeit their wages, rather than undergo the irksomeness of finishing it. To see a number of Indians, with no other garment on than a blanket, carrying lumber from the mill to the ship's side, paid for their labour in cotton shirts, blankets, or vermilion, and dining on biscuits and molasses, is calculated to strike one as being about the most primitive organisation of labour imaginable.

GAMES AND AMUSEMENTS.

The Indian has no impetus to continued exertion-the work of a few days or a few hours will supply all his present wants, and the labour of the summer season will go far to render him independent of the toil of procuring food for the winter. The rest of his time he passes in sleep or idleness, and time hangs as heavy on his hands as it does on those of people similarly situated in more civilised communities. Games and amusements of a rude sort fill up his time, these games being, however, almost entirely limited to the men.

Gambling is one of the chief weaknesses of an Indian. Once into the heat of the game, there is nothing he will not stake on its chance-canoes, horses, slaves, arms, even his wife and children will go, one after another; he has even been known to sell himself into slavery

before he would relinquish his chances of winning. More than once my Indians, when canoeing along the coast or up a river, have asked permission to go ashore for a few minutes, to where a number of Indians were sitting gambling, and in a short time have come back minus all their loose property, or some article of clothing-not unfrequently almost stark naked. There are even professional gamblers amongst them, who are great rogues and cheats. So intent are they on their games that they will pass whole days and nights engaged in them, often without ever touching food, or even being conscious of the lapse of time. A few of these games I will briefly describe. One called by the Tsongeisth, near Victoria, smec-tellaew from skel-e-ow, "the beaver,”—is a game of dice played with beavers' teeth. A blanket is spread on the ground-the number of players is two or three-generally two. A set of beavers' incisor teeth are marked as follows:-Two of them with one "spot," four with five, two with three sets of transverse bars, and one of the spotted ones with a ring of leather. This is the highest number. The counters are the bones of a wild duck's legs. The "dice" are tossed up with a circular motion from the hand, and counted in pairs, each of which counts one; but if more than two of each kind turn up, it is counted as nothing. If two bars and two spots, one of them with the "ace," it counts double (four); and so on, until the counters are exhausted. This is a favourite game among the Cowichans, Tɛongeisth, and even as far east as Lilloett, on Fraser River. It is essentially what the Americans call "poker dice." Card-playing has now spread pretty generally among the Indians, and the traveller will often come upon a group playing at seven up," "poker," "et chre," and "froze out," with a skill and avidity which would do (dis) credit to any Californian miner or Mississippi "sport." I have seen cards made by themselves out of bark. In Chinook, or general trade jargon, they are known as mamook le cult. They have also learned most of the gamblers' tricks, with some others more transparent, but peculiarly their own. Indian cardplaying has some redeeming qualities of its own. Instead of being played in close rooms, amid be-laced dowagers, it must be pleasant, on bright summer days or cool evenings, in some pleasant valley, surrounded with lofty hills, by the banks of some silvery, dreamy river, with the sound of the water ever flowing musically along, to "turn up the ace!" An Indian at Lilloett (an essentially gambling wayside village to the mines), a professional swindler at cards, was good enough to explain to me, while acting as my escort down the banks of the Fraser, how he could manage to cheat while dealing. Playing in the open air in that pleasant valley-like the Happy Valley in "Rasselas"-with a young Indian, while dealing he would shout out if he saw some lovely "forest maid" ascending one of the "benches" of the Fraser, "Nah! nanich okok tenass klotchman!" (Hallo! look at that young woman!) When the Indian looked round, old "Buffaloo" immediately took the opportunity of dealing double to himself, or of selecting an ace or two before his opponent had turned round. I believe that this worthy gentleman was afterwards shot for horse-stealing.

Horse-racing is a very favourite amusement among the horse Indians, as much for the sake of showing off the mettle of their cyuses-a term applied to the Indian horses from a tribe in Oregon, who are celebrated for their herds of horses-as for the sake of winning. The chief of the Shouswaps used invariably to beat the whites. One of the most picturesque sights in British Columbia or Northern Oregon is to see an Indian galloping along in his gay attire, singing some love-song. They are invariably admirable horsemen, and have rarely

any saddle, except one of their own manufacture, made of wood, and for bridle, a cord of horsehair twisted round the lower jaw of the animal.

The game I am now about to describe is par excellence the Indian game. It is played all through British Columbia, Vancouver Island, and Washington Territory, perhaps also in Oregon. Large quantities of property-even women and slaves, ay, even the gambler's own liberty-are staked on it, and the din of the game resounds in every Indian village in which I had ever an opportunity of residing for any length of time. The players are generally four, two on each side; but it may be played by any number, so long as the number of players is equal on either side. The gambling implements, which differ somewhat in appearance, are two round, carved pieces of polished wood, something like draught-men. These are tossed about in the hand, and from hand to hand, concealed in the blanket, and in any other manner by which the Indian can delude his opponent, the point of the game being that his opponent has to guess in which hand the particular disc of wood is held, and a stick (used as a counter) is lost or gained as the case may be. The game is, however, conducted without a word being spoken, the players sitting in a circle, the only sounds being the sing-song kept up while the players are manipulating the pieces of wood. So violent, however, are their exertions while so doing that the players are generally streaming with perspiration, which might lead a stranger on first seeing them at it to suppose them akin to the "dancing dervishes," and their employment of a religious character, instead of being the purest gambling. The betting is done by pointing to the arm of the hand in which the sought-for piece of wood is supposed to be held. Sometimes they decline guessing and watch a little longer, to see if by any means they can be quick enough to detect the piece of wood in its passage from one hand to another. This they express by pointing their forefinger downwards in the middle of the circle, and then the manipulation commences anew. A similar game is played by the Tsimpheans, on the northern coast of British Columbia, with beautifully polished pieces of rounded stick, about the size of the middle finger, each piece of stick having a different name. There is another modification of this game, A number of the pieces are taken and enveloped in a quantity of teased-out cedar bark. They are then skilfully tossed out, and bets are made on the guesses-whether a particularly marked one remains in the bark or not: this is played by most tribes. Another game is to set up a number of pieces of the tangle, and throw arrows at them with the hand, betting on the result. I have seen boys in Ucluluaht, on the western shores of Vancouver Island, playing at this, Some of the youngsters about Victoria have learned cricket and other European games, and are excessively fond of theatrical performances, though they may not be able to understand a word of the play. The theatre they call the hee-hee, or "laughing house," and in Victoria a portion of the little wooden theatre is set apart for them, at a uniform charge of half-a-dollar.

Among their own amusements are imitations of, or encounters with, wild animals, and other semi-theatrical entertainments. Hooking fingers, to try their strength by pulling against each other, is another amusement among some Indians. The "war-dance" of the western coast Indians consists merely of a number of men with blackened faces running out, yelling, hopping on one leg, firing guns, and then rushing in again. Dancing is a favourite amusement, and in some lodge or other almost every night in winter there will be a "little dance." If not, the chief will muster a number of the young men to dance in his house. The children amuse themselves by climbing poles, shooting with miniature bow and arrows, or

throwing tiny spears, paddling in a small canoe, and then overturning it and righting it again, &c. An eye-witness-Mr. Sproat-thus describes one of their dances:-"The sealdance is a common one. The men strip naked, though it may be a cold frosty night, and go into the water, from which they soon appear, dragging their bodies along the sand like seals.

They enter the houses, and crawl about round the fires, of which there may be fifteen or twenty kept bright with oil. After a time the dancers jump up, and dance about the house. At another dance in which all the performers are naked, a man appears with his arms tied behind his back with long cords, the ends of which are held like reins by other natives, who draw him

The under lip of the central figure shows the lip "ornament." In the background is a curiously carved enclosure of boards containing the dead body of a chief.