THE LOST ISLAND

“There is something on that island that I
want. I shall look for it until I die, for it is
there,” he affirmed.

There was a long silence between us after
that. I had learned to love silences when with
my old tillicum, for they always led to a
legend. After a time he began voluntarily:

“It was more than one hundred years ago.
This great city of Vancouver was but the
dream of the Sagalie Tyee (God) at that time.
The dream had not yet come to the white man;
only one great Indian medicine man knew
that some day a great camp for Palefaces
would lie between False Creek and the Inlet.
This dream haunted him; it came to him night
and day—when he was amid his people
laughing and feasting, or when he was alone
in the forest chanting his strange songs, beat-
ing his hollow drum, or shaking his wooden
witch—rattle to gain more power to cure the
sick and the dying of his tribe. For years this
dream followed him. He grew to be an old, old
man, yet always he could hear voices, strong
and loud, as when they first spoke to him in
his youth, and they would say: ‘Between the
two narrow strips of salt water the white men
will camp—many hundreds of them, many
thousands of them. The Indians will learn
their ways, will live as they do, will become
as they are. There will be no more great war

61