About the beginning of February, Maquina gave a great feast, at which were present not only all the inhabitants, but one hundred persons from Ai-tiz-zart, and a number from Wickinninish who had been invited to attend it. It is customary with them to give an annual entertainment of this kind, and it is astonishing to see what a quantity of provision is expended, or rather wasted, on such an occasion, when they always eat to the greatest excess. It was at this feast that I saw upwards of an hundred salmon cooked in one tub. The whole residence at Cooptee presents an almost uninterrupted succession of feasting and gormandising, and it would seem as if the principal object of these people was to consume their whole stock of provision before leaving it, trusting entirely to their success in fishing and whaling, for a supply at Nootka. On the 25th of February we quitted Cooptee, and returned to Nootka. With much joy did Thompson and myself again find ourselves in a place where, notwithstanding the melancholy recollections which it excited, we hoped before long to see some vessel arrive to our relief, and for this we became the more solicitous, as of late we had become much more apprehensive of our safety, in consequence of information brought Maquina a few days before we left Cooptee, by some of the Cayuquets, that there were twenty ships at the northward, preparing to come against him, with an intent of destroying him and his whole tribe, for cutting off the _Boston_. This story, which was wholly without foundation, and discovered afterwards to have been invented by these people, for the purpose of disquieting him, threw him into great alarm, and, notwithstanding all I could say to convince him that it was an unfounded report, so great was his jealousy of us, especially after it had been confirmed to him by some others of the same nation, that he treated us with much harshness, and kept a very suspicious eye upon us. Nothing, indeed, could be more unpleasant than our present situation, when I reflected that our lives were altogether dependent on the will of a savage, on whose caprice and suspicions no rational calculation could be made. * * * * * Not long after our return, a son of Maquina's sister, a boy of eleven years old, who had been for some time declining, died. Immediately on his death, which was about midnight, all the men and women in the house set up loud cries and shrieks, which, awakening Thompson and myself, so disturbed us that we left the house. This lamentation was kept up during the remainder of the night. In the morning, a great fire was kindled, in which Maquina burned, in honour of the deceased, ten fathoms of cloth, and buried with him ten fathoms more, eight of Ife-whaw, four prime sea-otter skins, and two small trunks, containing our unfortunate captain's clothes and watch.