These ready-made sea candles, little dips
wanting only a wick that can be added in a
minute, are easily transformed by heat and
pressure into liquid. If the Indian drink instead
of burning them, he gets a fuel in the shape of
oil that keeps up the combustion within himself,
burnt and consumed in the lungs, just as it
was by the wick, but giving only heat. It
is by no mere chance that myriads of small fish,
in obedience to a wondrous instinct, annually
visit the northern seas, containing within
themselves all the elements necessary for supplying
light and heat and life to the poor savage who,
but for this supply, must perish in the bitter
cold of the long dreary winter.

As soon as the Indians have stored away the
full supply of food for the winter, all the fish
subsequently taken are converted into oil. If
we stroll down to the lodges near the beach,
we shall see for ourselves how they manage it.

The compound odour that breaks over us like a
wave, is not such as the breezes waft from the
Spice Islands. It fairly sets one a sneezing
by its potency. There is an indescribable mixture
of putrid fish and rancid oil, with a strong
savour of dog and many other disagreeables.
The fish reserved for oil-making have been
piled in heaps until partially decomposed; five
or six fires are blazing away, and in each fire are
a number of large round pebbles to be made very
hot. By each fire, are four large square boxes,
dug out from the solid pine-tree. A squaw carefully
piles in each box, a layer of fish about three
deep, and covers them with cold water. She
then puts five or six of the hot stones upon the
layers of fish, and when the steam has cleared
away, carefully lays small pieces of wood over
the stones. More fish, more water, more stones,
more layers of wood, and so on, until the box is
filled. The oil-maker now takes all the liquid from
this box, and uses it over again instead of water
in filling another box, and skims the oil off as it
floats on the surface. Vast quantities of oil are
thus obtained; often as much as seven hundred
weight will be made by one small tribe. The refuse
fish are not yet done with, more oil being
extractable from them. Built against the pine-tree
is a small stage, made of poles, very like a
monster gridiron. The refuse of the boxes,
having been sewn up in porous mats, is placed
on the stage to be rolled and pressed by the arms
and chests of Indian women; and the oil thus
squeezed out is collected in a box placed
underneath.

Not only has Nature, ever bountiful, sent an
abundance of oil to the Red Skin, but she actually
provides ready-made bottles to store it away in.
The great sea-wrack, that grows to an
immense size in these northern seas, and forms
submarine forests, has a hollow stalk, expanded
into a complete flask at the root end. Cut into
lengths of about three feet, these hollow stalks,
with the bulb at the end, are collected and kept
wet until required for use. As the oil is
obtained, it is stored away in these natural
quart bottles, or better than quart bottles, for
some of them hold three pints.

The specific name of the lamp fish, as given
by Sir John Richardson, is Salmo (Mallotus)
Pacificus. Eulachon is its name among the
Indians, in whose waters it arrives early in
July. Its length is about seven and a half inches;
the colour of its scales and belly is a silvery white,
passing on the back into dark greenish olive,
irregularly dotted with oval spots of yellowish
orange. It has a small dark spot over each
orbit, a head somewhat conical and pointed,
a large mouth, and eyes rather small; the fins
are unspotted, and of dingy yellow.

Some fifty years ago, when the hardy but
unlucky band of pioneers in the good ship
Tonquin struggled over the treacherous sandbar
at the mouth of the Columbia river, and
founded Astoria, immortalised in story by
Washington Irving, vast shoals of Eulachon used
regularly to enter the river, and these, together
with the salmon, dried, used to supply the native
with his whole winter food. But the silent
stroke of the Indian paddle has now given place
to the splashing wheels of great steamers, and
the Indian and the Eulachon have disappeared
together. From the same causes the Eulachon
has also disappeared from Puget's Sound, and is
now seldom caught south of latitude fifty degrees
north.

FALSE FEARS.

A GREAT many things take the strength and
vitality out of a man, and reduce him to a helpless
bundle of pulp. I need not enumerate them,
but I do not think that anything brings him
to such a pitiable state of flabbiness as Fear
—especially False Fear; of which there is
much in the world.

Who is it, that says the characteristic of a
savage is Fear? Fear of the twilight shadow
which conceals the enemy skulking in the forest;
fear of the noonday sun which reveals his
wigwam or his trail; fear of treachery and
desertion from his friends, and of surprise and
murder from the foe; fear of his chief, of his
king, of his parents, of his sons; fear of the
storm and fear of the calm; fear of hunger
and fear of thirst; his religion a code of
fear— fear the ruling quality of his mind always,
sharpening his faculties to the strange
acuteness they attain, and teaching that wild
desperation of attack which looks on the
surface like courage.

If this be true of the savage in his degree, it
is true also of us, with different aspects and
directions. We all live a life of fear of something
—either fact or fiction, person or bogie; and,
to my view of things, real courage of the mental
sort (the physical is common enough) is the
rarest quality to be found among men. Why, if
there were nothing else, there is that shadowy
hobgoblin, Mrs. Grundy; and I should like to
know what is the respect paid to her but the
base worship of fear? The cultus of terror and
cowardice combined? Yet take her by the throat
and she vanishes; pay her homage and bring her
tribute, and you are her bonded slave for ever.

We are afraid of everything now-a-days;