[74] Yet they are by no means weak in the legs, a coast Indian being capable of long travel in the bush without tiring. The Hydahs of Queen Charlotte Island, and the Tlinkets and Kaloshes of the neighbouring mainland, are splendid specimens of men, tall, comparatively fair, large-headed, regularly-featured, and endowed with courage and intelligence, though their morals leave much to be desired. All the canoe Indians are very strong-handed, owing to the constant use of the paddle. In a scuffle with one of them, it does not do to let him get a grip; better prevent him from coming to close quarters, for in this case the white man has little chance. The Klahoquahts are the finest-looking of the Vancouver west coast tribes. [75] I have rarely seen a corpulent Indian, and not one idiot, or a cripple so deformed that he was incapable of earning his livelihood. It is seldom that they are deformed from birth, and when they are, they generally disappear, so as not to be a burden on the tribe. As a facetious old savage remarked to me, when discussing that curious immunity from helplessness in his tribe, "The climate doesn't agree with them." The brother of Quisto, chief of the Pachenahts in 1865 (San Juan Harbour), was much deformed in the legs, but he was an excellent canoeman. [76] Commonly the flattish nacreous portion of the Abelone, or Ear-shell (_Haliotis Kamschatkiana_), known as _Apats-em_, which is pawned or sold in times of scarcity. By constant removal and insertion, the septum of the nose, through which it is fastened, becomes in time so large that it will admit almost any kind of moderately-sized ornament. Feathers are frequently inserted, and more than once I have seen an Indian, clad in a blanket alone, denude himself of his single garment to hold biscuits or other goods, and dispose of his pipe by sticking it in the hole through his nasal septum, which, had times been better, would have been occupied with a piece of shell, either square, oblong, or of a horseshoe shape. [77] This is the well-known _Dentalium pretiosum_, or Tooth-shell, generally known as the _Hioqua_. It is procured chiefly from Cape Flattery, on the southern side of Juan de Fuca Strait, and from Koskeemo Sound on the north. The "Aitizzarts" (Ayhuttisahts) probably obtained it by barter with the tribes on that part of the coast. It is not much used nowadays.--_The Peoples of the World_, vol. i. p. 60. [78] This is powdered mica of the black variety. It is obtained in various places, from veins exposed, for the most part in the beds of streams.