Nature made bounteous provision for the wants of the aboriginal inhabitants of British Columbia. The seas and rivers were teeming with fish--salmon of several kinds, halibut, cod, and sturgeon, and among smaller fish, herring, oolachan, smelts, and trout; the beaches and shallows afforded large sea crabs, clams, cockles, and oysters. The plains, valleys and mountains abounded in wild animals of many kinds--elk, moose, cariboo, deer, mountain sheep and goats, bears of different colors, and numerous smaller fur-bearing creatures. The forests, the sky and the lakes and streams were alive with members of the feathered tribe--swans, geese, ducks of several varieties, and, besides all these, the Indians were not averse to eating eagles and gulls, if necessity demanded. Besides laying in large stores of dried meats and fish, the natives gathered large quantities of wild berries, of which there were several varieties, and dried them for their winter supplies. There were many other kinds of food, such as the inner bark of the spruce tree, many kinds of roots, wild potatoes, wild onions, wild rice, sea-weed, fish, eggs or spawn, crab apples and nuts. METHODS OF COOKING. The people had three common ways of cooking their food: by boiling, steaming, and broiling before the fire. To cook a quantity of provisions in one of their big tubs or boxes--for they had no pots in those days--they poured in water sufficient to cook the quantity needed, and then red hot stones, lifted with a pair of wooden tongs, were dropped in to make it boil. When salmon or other fish were to be cooked, they usually cut off the heads and tails, and kept up the boiling process until all was reduced to a broth, when it was ladled out into dishes or long troughs and set before the people. Think of seven hundred salmon cooked in this way for a single feast! To prepare food by steaming, a large fire was first kindled on a bed of cobble stones. When the wood had burned out, the stones being very hot, layers of green grass or sea-weed were laid on the top of the stones and kept damp with water. The clams, mussels, or other shell fish--if salmon, cod, halibut or sturgeon, usually only the heads and tails were thus prepared--whatever they wished to cook, were placed upon the grass, a little water was poured upon the top, and the whole was closely covered with mats, leaves, or boughs to keep in the steam. This is much the best means of cooking clams or other shell fish. They are delicious when cooked after this fashion.