I refitted at Skidegate, hiring a stronger canoe and two Hydah Indians, known as Sam and Tom, who, together, were well acquainted with the principal waters to be traversed. Proceeding southward, steep and often precipitous mountains, ranging in elevation from 800 to 4,000 feet above the sea, rugged and rocky on their western slopes, densely covered with forests of spruce, hemlock and cedar, extended from Skidegate to Cape St. James, and from Queen Charlotte Sound to the Pacific Ocean, over all the islands, so far as any observations extend, except a few thousand acres of grazing lands. Small tracts of arable meadows and garden patches are cultivated by the natives. The narrowness of the island south of Skidegate leaves but little room for an interior, beyond the range of the eye, when standing upon the summits of the highest mountains, after having traversed their shores. The latter are uniformly rock bound, frequently bluffy or precipitous, from 20 to 1,500 feet in height, with generally very limited borders of level country, the base of the steep mountains reaching down to the sea, with but narrow foothill slopes. The streams flowing from the short watersheds are small but numerous, and without exception, filled with fallen trees from their source to their mouth. Their waters are generally rapid, clear and good. Trout are plentiful in most of them, and a small, very excellent salmon is caught in considerable numbers in several of the largest. We found Chief Skidegate and several of his people securing their spring supply by means of traps, from a creek flowing into Copper Bay, and Chief Skedance _en route_ for the same purpose to a small stream emptying into Cumshewa Inlet from Louise Island.