I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection.

When they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician began to scarify the ulcer with a very blunt instrument, the cruel pain of which operation the patient bore with incredible resolution.
The scene afflicted me, and I left it." The chief of this village had probably met Captain Cook about ten years before.

He had been down in a large canoe[12] with forty of his people to the seacoast, where he saw two large vessels.
[Footnote 12: Mackenzie thus describes one of the large sea-going canoes of the coast natives: "This canoe was built of cedar, forty-five feet long, four feet broad, and three and a half in depth.
It was painted black and decorated with white figures of different kinds.

The gunwale fore and aft was inlaid with the teeth of the sea otter." He adds that "these coast tribes (north of Vancouver Island and of Queen Charlotte Sound) had been in indirect contact with the Spaniards since the middle of the sixteenth century, and with the Russians from the middle of the eighteenth century.

Therefore, from these two directions they had learnt the use of metal, and had obtained copper, brass, and iron.