The town of Essington dates back to 1835, when the Hudson Bay Company established a post there. Its only rival for preeminence on the coast is Port Simpson. The town in summer is completely given over to fishing, the salmon cannery of Cunningham & Son being one of the largest on the coast, and the river for twenty miles is dotted with canneries. In one day, while we were in Essington, the catch of salmon on the river was ninety-two thousand fish. In addition to the cannery the town boasts of a good hotel and a Salvation Army. An Indian Salvation Army is worth going miles to see, for the Indian is a natural-born salvationist; the army permits him to make all the noise he chooses, sing as loudly as he pleases, and, best of all, he is entitled to make a speech every time it comes his turn. In the afternoon, about four o'clock, on the day after our arrival, a long, shrill blast of the whistle aroused the entire town, for the Caledonia was in sight. Down we went to the wharf, and the entire town followed. What a motley crowd you will find on one of these British Columbia wharves! What coloring, what a Babel of tongues--Tlingits from Alaska, Haidas from the Queen Charlotte Islands, Tsimshians from the Skeena, Kwakiutls from Vancouver, Chinamen, Japanese, Greeks, Scandinavians, Englishmen, and Yankees; men, women, children, dogs, and from two to six woolly bear cubs. The Caledonia is the exclusive property of the Hudson Bay Company; she is not a common carrier, and does not encourage either passengers or freight, as the tariff rates prove. There is a feverish haste and hustle about the movements of the steamer which are fairly contagious. She makes her first trip early in the spring, as soon as the ice has left the rivers, on the Stickene; then it is a wild, eager ambition of the company to have her make four trips up the Skeena before the river closes up in the fall. We had as passengers two prospectors from Spokane, a mining expert from Victoria, a native evangelist from Essington, and about fifty Indians, mostly women and children, each one with a varied assortment of boxes, bales, bundles, and dogs; the crew numbered twenty, and we had about one hundred tons of freight on board.