The Nettinahts[15] are a more powerful tribe; indeed, at the period when the writer of this book was a prisoner in Nootka Sound, they were among the strongest of all the Aht people. Even then, they had four hundred[16] fighting men, and were a people with whom it did not do to be off your guard. They have--or had--many villages, from Pachena Bay[17] to the west and Karleit to the east, besides three villages in Nettinaht Inlet,[18] eleven fishing stations on the Nettinaht River, three stations on the Cowitchan Lake, and one at Sguitz on the Cowitchan River itself, while they sometimes descend as far as Tsanena to plant potatoes. They have thus the widest borders of any Indian tribe in Vancouver Island, and have a high reputation as hunters, whale-fishers, and warriors. Moqulla was then the head chief, but every winter a sub-tribe hunted and fished on the Cowitchan Lake, a sheet of water which I was among the first to visit, and the very first to "lay down" with approximate accuracy. Though nowadays--_Eheu fugaces, Postume, Postume, labuntur anni!_--there is a waggon road to the lake, and, I am told, "a sort of hotel" on the spot where eight-and-twenty years ago we encamped on extremely short rations, though with the soothing knowledge that if only the Fates were kindly and the wind favourable, there were plenty of trout in the water, and a dinner at large in the woods around. In those days most of the Nettinaht villages were fortified with wooden pickets to prevent any night attack, and from its situation, Whyack, the principal one (built on a cliff, stockaded on the seaward side, and reached only by a narrow entrance where the surf breaks continuously), is impregnable to hostile canoemen. This people accordingly carried themselves with a high hand, and bore a name correspondingly bad.