A good many occupations are connected with the food supply, and everywhere near the coast or the banks of Fraser River there are Indians busy catching, cleaning, drying, and extracting oil from fish, among which the salmon is most prized. Gathering quantities of roots, berries, and nuts is a favourite occupation with women and children, who are made responsible for laying in large quantities of vegetable food for winter. While men are occupied with hunting and fishing, women collect roots of the cedar tree, and from the bark of these baskets of varied patterns are neatly manufactured. Human and animal designs are interwoven with pieces of coloured fibre in such a way as to give an ornamental effect, though the Indian’s idea is not merely decoration, but a desire to portray the animal helpers which he holds in reverence. Very light vessels may be made from bark of birch and spruce trees; some hold several gallons, and may be held on the back by leather thongs, one of which passes round the forehead of the carrier. Canoes of birch bark are so light that they can be carried across land for several miles, and travellers have many times crossed from Hudson Bay to Vancouver chiefly by use of these light portable canoes. The manufacture of bows and arrows is an important undertaking, for on these the hunter’s life and food supply entirely depend. Very great care is taken in providing a bow string which will not be affected by damp, and after threads of sinew have been neatly plaited into one strand, the whole is rubbed with glue from the sturgeon, or perhaps with gum from the black pine tree. Some tribes provided the end of the bow with a sharply pointed stone, so that the implement could be used as a thrusting spear when an animal came to close quarters, and the hunter had not time to fit another arrow. Willow and mountain maple are tough, elastic woods suitable for the bow, which is always strengthened by a layer of sinew, cherry-tree bark, or snake skin, which is glued to the wood. Barbed and leaf-shaped arrow or spear points are used for hunting and warfare. Rock crystal, quartz, and a hard, dark, shiny stone named obsidian are most serviceable for weapons; poison made from fangs of the rattlesnake is used as a varnish for these stone arrow points, so the hunter must be very careful that he does not scratch himself when fitting an arrow to the bow. Metal plays an ever increasing part in the Indian’s outfit, but there are still many knives, daggers, war clubs, spears, and tomahawks, in the manufacture of which sharpened stone is employed. “Tomahawk” means a skull cracker, and no better name could have been employed, for this implement pecks out a little circular hole in the skull, and many graves have been opened in which the skeleton shows plainly by what instrument the fatal blow was delivered. No stone implement is more prized than the hammer, which takes a great deal of chipping and rubbing from hard stone.