The rivers, which I followed to their source, rise in lakes and small swampy mountain basins. There are several harbors, where large vessels may find perfect shelter during the severest storms. Although the timber area is so great, there are but few localities where saw mills could be profitably operated. The forest embraces no Douglass fir, but little available yellow cedar or cypress, and only comparatively small bodies of merchantable spruce, which are accessible without the construction of expensive roads. Between Skidegate and Cape St. James there are more than thirty islands and islets, and bays, inlets, harbors, sounds and channels in great numbers. Day after day and week after week we paddled, rowed and sailed along these wonderful shores, visiting the Indian villages of Cumshewa, Skedance, Laskeek, or Tanoo, and Ninstints, all occupied, and several others now abandoned. We also crossed Moresby Island from the east to the west coast at two different points, where the Indians assured me that there were trails over which canoes had sometimes been carried. We found no signs of a trail, except for a short distance, but, on the contrary, a country so difficult to traverse, on account of swamps and fallen timber, that the transportation of canoes through it would be a most laborious undertaking. All of the villages named are beautifully situated, facing the south from cozy sheltered nooks, with splendid beaches, and abundant supplies of food conveniently near. Besides the halibut bank marked on the chart, there is one near all of the villages mentioned, and inexhaustible quantities of clams and mussels along the neighboring shores. This is certainly one of the most favored regions in the world for the abode of the Indian. From the number and size of their houses now occupied, and ruins, from fifty to seventy in each village, their burial Ghans and houses filled with the dead, these islands most have contained at least ten times their present population. Smallpox and the corruption of their women have been the principal causes of their destruction. The Hyda women, being good looking compared with those of the other coast tribes, have for twenty years been the special prey of the coarse libertines of a large floating population, until virtue is almost unknown among them. Nothing can save the race from speedy extinction except the most careful Christian training of their few healthy children. There are no missionaries in any of these villages, nor have they been visited by white men, except at long intervals. They treated me, however, with great kindness, inviting me to sleep in their houses, both at Laskeek and Ninstints, and presenting my guides with dried and fresh halibut, dried sea weed, fish spawn, and the eggs of sea fowl.