These were, however, unusually unpleasant incidents. More frequently we saw little except the more lightsome traits of what was then a very primitive savage life, and the barbarous folk treated us kindly. A marriage feast might be in progress, or a great "potlatch," or merrymaking, at which the giving away of property was the principal feature (p. 82), might be in full blaze at the very moment we steered round the wooded point. Halibut and dog-fish were being caught in vast quantities--the one for slicing and drying for winter use; the other for the sake of the oil extracted from the liver, then as now an important article of barter, being in ready demand by the Puget Sound saw-mills. Now and then a fur-seal or, better still, a sea-otter would be killed. But this is not the land of choice furs. Even the marten and the mink were indifferent. Beaver--which in those days, after having been almost hunted to death, were again getting numerous, owing to the low prices which the pelts brought having slackened the trappers' zeal--would often be brought on board, and a few hides of the wapiti, the "elk" of the Western hunter, and the black-tailed deer which swarm in the Vancouver woods, generally appeared at every village. The natives are, however, essentially fish-eaters, and though in every tribe there is generally a hunter or two, the majority of them seldom wander far afield, the interior being in their mythology a land of evil things, of which wise men would do well to keep clear. Even the black bear, which in autumn was often a common feature of the country, where it ranged the crab-apple thickets, was not at this season an object of the chase. Like the deer and the wolves, it was shunning the heat and the flies by summering near the snow which we could notice still capping some of the inland hills, rising to heights of from five thousand to seven thousand feet, and feasting on the countless salmon which were descending every stream, until, with the receding waters, they were left stranded in the upland pools. So cheap were salmon, that at times they could be bought for a cent's worth of "trade goods," and deer in winter for a few charges of powder and shot. A whale-hunt, in which the behemoth was attacked by harpoons with attached inflated sealskins, after a fashion with which I had become familiar when a resident among the Eskimo of Baffin Bay, was a more curious sight. Yet dog-fish oil was the staple of the unpicturesque traffic in which my companions engaged; while I, a hunter after less considered trifles, landed to roam the woods and shores for days at a time, gathering the few flowers which bloomed under these umbrageous forests, though in number sufficient to tempt the red-beaked humming-bird[12] to migrate from Mexico to these northern regions, its tiny nest being frequently noticed on the tops of low bushes. [Sidenote: The Aht Indians.]