LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER

Keep them for my people that they may be strong enough to endure the white man's rule. Keep my strength living for them; hide it so that the Paleface may never find or see it.’

“Then he came down from the summit of Grouse Mountain. Still chanting his medicine songs he entered his canoe, and paddled through the colors of the setting sun far up the North Arm. When night fell he came to an island with misty shores of great grey rock; on its summit tall pines and firs circled like a king's crown. As he neared it he felt all his strength, his courage, his fearlessness, leaving him; he could see these things drift from him on to the island. They were as the clouds that rest on the mountains, grey-white and half transparent. Weak as a woman he paddled back to the Indian village; he told them to go and search for ‘The Island,’ where they would find all his courage, his fearless- ness and his strength, living, living forever. He slept then, but—in the morning he did not awake. Since then our young men and our old have searched for ‘The Island.’ It is there somewhere, up some lost channel, but we can- not find it. When we do, we will get back all the courage and bravery we had before the white man came, for the great medicine man said those things never die—they live for one’s children and grandchildren.”

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