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Updated: September 6, 2025
Within were to be had stores of toy canoes graceful little things hewn after the Haida model, with prows and sides painted in strange hieroglyphics; paddles were there life-size, so to speak, gorgeously dyed, and just the things for hall decorations; also dishes of carved wood of quaint pattern, and some of them quite ancient, were to be had at very moderate prices; pipes and pipe-bowls of the weirdest description; halibut fish-hooks, looking like anything at all but fish-hooks; Shaman rattles, grotesque in design; Thlinket baskets, beautifully plaited and stained with subdued dyes the most popular of souvenirs; spoons with bone bowls and handles carved from the horns of the mountain goat or musk-ox; even the big horn-spoon itself was no doubt made by these ingenious people; Indian masks of wood, inlaid with abalone shells, bears' teeth, or lucky stones from the head of the catfish; Indian wampum; deer-skin sacks filled with the smooth, pencil-shaped sticks with which the native sport passes the merry hours away in games of chance; bangles without end, and rings of the clumsiest description hammered out of silver coin; bows and arrows; doll papooses, totem poles in miniature.
Within their circle he had been wont to sit ensconced in his elbow-chair beside the hearth, his by long use and custom, and not to be usurped; and while the smoke rose slowly from their pipe-bowls, and the ale foamed in tankards at their elbows, he would recount some tale of battle and sudden death now in the freezing trenches before Sebastopol, now upon the blood-stained heights of Inkermann.
An occasional question put in a deep-toned, sonorous voice, a short but emphatic reply, a guttural grunt, a dignified nod, a gesture with the hand; and thus they conversed, as they filled their pipe-bowls with the kini-kin-ik, and passed the valued instruments from one to another.
When that had fled, nothing was left us to combat the sensation that we were in the depths of a manure-bed, for the windows were closed, the tobacco-smoke thickened, the hides of animals wrapping our immense companions reeked; fire occasionally glowed in their pipe-bowls; they were silent, and gave out smoke and heat incessantly, like inanimate forces of nature.
It was cunningly contrived Ambrose could not touch one of the strips ever so gently without giving an alarm. Thereafter, as long as it was light, he could see them loafing and sleeping in the grass outside with their guns beside them. After dark their pipe-bowls glowed. Three days of inexpressible tedium followed. Had it not been for Job, Ambrose felt he would have gone out of his mind.
The third division contained an African loom, and an African spindle with spun cotton round it; cloths of cotton of various kinds, made by the natives, some white, but others dyed by them of different colours, and others, in which they had interwoven European silk; cloths and bags made of grass, and fancifully coloured; ornaments made of the same materials; ropes made from a species of aloes, and others, remarkably strong, from grass and straw; fine string made from the fibres of the roots of trees; soap of two kinds, one of which was formed from an earthy substance; pipe-bowls made of clay, and of a brown red; one of these, which came from the village of Dakard, was beautifully ornamented by black devices burnt in, and was besides highly glazed; another, brought from Gal
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