Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 6.djvu/190

184 DR. JOHN SCOULER. Before we left the coast we were informed by good author- ity that his advice was not false. 3d. In the morning canoes from Nass began to make their appearance, & in a short time we had 15 canoes & about 150 people about us. We were soon convinced of their friendly intentions, as they had brought their wives & children with them. Those who appeared to be chiefs among them were brought on board & feasted on bread & molasses, of all things the most delicious to an Indian palate. They behaved with uniform propriety & honesty ; a tin dish in which we had given them some molasses was taken ashore in the evening, but a canoe came of[f] with it before we could detect the mistake. 4th. We were busily occupied to-day in trading [with] the Nass people ; they proved to be keen merchants, but were not guilty of any attempt to cheat. We obtained some of the haunch backed [salmon] of[f] by C. Vancouver & embraced the opportunity of investigating its internal structure. In general the left side is of a lighter colour than the right. The dorsal protuberance is narrow & acute, & is composed entirely of cellular matter. Brachial rays four; numerous. All the individuals that had the haunch back were males, their snout was also produced to a considerable extent & armed with powerful teeth. Upper jaw arcaded [?]. These people had in their canoes a kind of square cake which they were always chewing. On examining these cakes I found there were two kinds of them. The one was of a soft consistence & consisted of different species of Halymenia, compressed into a cake. From the taste of these cakes & the saline efflorescence on their surface, it was obvious they did not wash the salt water of[f] them. The other cake was of a more firm consistence, & consisted of the bark of some tree beaten very fine & then compressed