The
surrounding hills were involved in fog.... The bay appeared to be some
three miles in breadth, and on the coast the travellers saw a great
number of sea otters.[13] At two in the afternoon the swell was so
high, and the wind, which was against them, so boisterous, that they
could not proceed along the seacoast in their leaky canoe. A young
chief who had come with them as one of their guides, and who had been
allowed to leave when the seacoast was reached, returned bearing a
large porcupine on his back. He first cut the animal open and threw
its entrails into the sea, then singed the skin and boiled it in
separate pieces; nor did he go to rest till, with the assistance of
two others who happened to be awake, every morsel of it had been
devoured. This was fortunate, because their stock of provisions was
reduced to twenty pounds' weight of pemmican, sixteen pounds of rice,
and six pounds of flour amongst ten men, "in a leaky vessel, and on a
barbarous coast".
[Footnote 13: These _may_ have been small seals, but the sea otter
(_Enhydris lutris_), now nearly extinct, was at one time found in
numbers along the north-west American coast, from the Aleutian Islands
and Alaska to Oregon. Owing to persecution it now leads an almost
entirely aquatic life, resting at times on the masses of floating
seaweed.]
The rise and fall of the tide here was noted at fifteen feet in
height.
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