When I visited Nootka Sound in 1863, fifty-eight years had passed since the captivity of the author of this book. In the interval many things had happened. But though the Indians had altered in some respects, they were perhaps less changed than almost any other savages in America since the whites came in contact with them. Eighty-five years had passed since Cook had careened his ships in Resolution Cove, and seventy since Vancouver entered the Sound on his almost more notable voyage. Yet the bricks from the blacksmith's forge, fresh and vitrified as if they had been in contact with the fire only yesterday, were at times dug up from among the rank herbage. The village in Friendly Cove--a spot which not a few mariners found to be very unfriendly--differed in no way from the picture in Cook's _Voyage_; and though some curio-hunting captain had no doubt long ago carried off the mortar and emblazoned brasses, the natives still spoke traditionally of Cook and Vancouver, and were ready to point out the spots where in 1788 Meares built the _North-West America_ and the white men had cultivated. Memories of Martinez and Quadra existed in the shape of many legends, of Indians with Iberian features, and of several old people who by tradition (though some of them were old enough to have remembered these navigators), could still repeat the Spanish numerals. And the head chief of the Mooachahts in Friendly Cove--vastly smaller though his tribe was, and much abridged his power--was a grandson of Maquenna, called by the same name, and had many of his worst characteristics. This fact I am likely to remember. For he had been accused of having murdered, in the previous January, Captain Stev of the _Trader_, and since that time no whites had ventured near him. He, however, assured us that the report was simply a scandal raised by the neighbouring tribes, who had long hated him and his people, and would like to see them punished by the arrival of a gunboat, and that in reality the vessel was wrecked, and the white men were drowned. At the same time, among the voices heard that night at the council held in Maquenna's great lodge, supported by the huge beams described by Jewitt, were some in favour of killing his latest visitors, on the principle that dead men tell no tales. But that the Noes had it, the present narrative is the best proof.