LEGENDS OF VANCOUVER

and they want a great salmon run also. They cannot have both. The Sagalie Tyee has re- vealed to us, the great men of magic, that both these things will make the people arro- gant and selfish.‘ They must choose between the two.’

“ ‘Choose, oh! you ignorant tribes-people,’ commanded the Great Tyee. ‘The wise men of our coast have‘ said that the girl-child who will some day bear children of her own, will also bring abundance of salmon at her birth; but the boy-child brings to you but himself.’

“ ‘Let the salmon go,” shouted the people, ‘but give us a future Great Tyee. Give us the boy-child.’

“And when the child was born it was a boy.

“ ‘Evil will fall upon you,’ wailed the Great Tyee. ‘You have despised a mother-woman. You will sufier evil and starvation and hunger and poverty, oh! foolish tribes-people. Did you not know how great a girl-child is?’

“That spring, people from a score of tribes came up to the Fraser for the salmon run. They came great distances-—from the moun- tains, the lakes, the far-off dry lands, but not one fish entered the vast rivers of the Pacific Coast. The people had made their choice. They had forgotten the honor that a mother- child would have brought them. They were bereft of their food. They were stricken

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