On arriving at Chehalis John kindly invited me to stop over night with
him, but I declined with thanks. I went into his house, however, to wait
while he got ready to take me down to Barker's. It was the same type of
home that nearly all these Indians have--a large clapboard building
about eight feet high, with smoked salmon hung everywhere and a fire in
the centre of the room, which, by the way, was more of a smoke than
fire, curing the winter provender. A pile of wood lay in one corner of
the room, some empty barrels in another, fish-nets were hung in still
another, and the family lived, principally, in the fourth. John lives
with his father-in-law, mother-in-law, two brothers-in-law, one
sister-in-law, his wife and three papooses. Blankets, pots, tinware and
grub of various kinds were piled up promiscuously in this living corner,
and the little undressed kids hovered and shivered around the dull fire,
suffering from the cold. We were soon in the canoe again, _en route_ to
the steamboat landing, where we arrived soon after dark. I regretted to
part with John, for I had found him a good, faithful servant and staunch
friend. I was glad to get rid of Seymour, however, for I had learned
that he was a contemptible sneak, and told him so in as many words.
_En route_ home I had about two hours to wait at Port Moody for the
boat. There were great numbers of grebes and ducks in the bay, and I
asked the dock foreman if there was any rule against shooting there. He
said he guessed not; he had never seen anyone shooting there, but he
guessed there wouldn't be any objection. I got out my rifle and two
boxes of cartridges and opened on the birds. The ducks left at once, but
the grebes sought safety in diving, and as soon as the fusillade began a
number of gulls came hovering around, apparently to learn the cause of
the racket. I had fine sport between the two, and a large audience to
enjoy it with me. In ten minutes from the time I commenced shooting all
the clerks in the dock office, all the freight hustlers in the
warehouse, all the railroad section men, the ticket-agent and
baggage-master, numbering at least twenty men in the aggregate, were
clustered around me, and their comments on my rifle and shooting were
extremely amusing. Not a man in the party had ever before seen a
Winchester express, and the racket it made, the way in which the balls
plowed up the water, and the way the birds, when hit, vanished into thin
air and a few feathers, were mysteries far beyond their power to solve.
At the first lull in the firing half a dozen of them rushed up and
wanted to examine the rifle, the fancy finish and combination sights of
which were as profoundly strange to them as to the benighted Indians.
They soon handed it back to me, however, with the request to resume
hostilities against the birds; they preferred to see the old thing work
rather than to handle it. The gulls were soaring in close, and six
shots, rapidly delivered, dropped three of them into the water,
mutilated beyond recognition. This was the climax; the idea of killing
birds on the wing, with a rifle, was something these men had never
before heard of, and two or three examined my cartridges to see if they
were not loaded with shot, instead of bullets. When they found this
suspicion was groundless they were beside themselves with wonder and
admiration of the strange arm. As a matter of fact, it required no
particular skill to kill the gulls on the wing, for they were the large
gray variety, and frequently came within twenty or thirty feet of me, so
that anyone who could kill them with a shotgun could do so with a rifle.
Finally the steamer came in and I went aboard. The train arrived soon
after and several of its passengers boarded the boat. The gulls were now
hovering about the steamer, picking up whatever particles of food were
thrown overboard from the cook-room. One old Irishman, who had come in
on the train from the interior wilds, walked out on the quarter deck and
looking at them intently for a few minutes, turned to me and inquired:
"Phwat kind of burds is thim--geese?"
"Yes," I said, "thim's geese, I reckon."
"Well, be gorry, if I had a gun here I'd shoot some o'thim"; and he went
and told his companions "there was a flock of the tamest wild geese out
thare ye iver sawed."
[Illustration: A SNAP SHOT WITH A DETECTIVE CAMERA.]
The return journey to Portland was without incident. There I boarded the
steamer and spent another delightful day on the broad bosom of the
Columbia river, winding up among the grand basaltic cliffs and
towering mountain peaks of the Cascade Range. Again the little camera
came into requisition, and though the day was cloudy and blusterous,
though snow fell at frequent intervals, and though the steamer trembled
like a reed shaken by the wind, I made a dozen or more exposures on the
most interesting and beautiful subjects as we passed them, and to my
surprise many came out good pictures. Most of them lack detail in the
deeper shadows, but the results altogether show that had the day been
clear and bright all would have been perfect. In short, it is possible
with this dry-plate process to make good pictures from a moving
steamboat, or even from a railway train going at a high rate of speed. I
made three pictures from a Northern Pacific train, coming through the
Bad Lands, when running twenty-five miles an hour, and though slightly
blurred in the near foreground, the buttes and bluffs, a hundred yards
and further away, are as sharp as if I had been standing on the ground
and the camera on a tripod; and a snap shot at a prairie-dog town--just
as the train slowed on a heavy grade--shows several of the little
rodents in various poses, some of them apparently trying to look pretty
while having their "pictures took."