"Before you born, or I, or"--pointing across the park to the distant
city of Vancouver that breathed its wealth and beauty across the
September afternoon--"before that place born, before white man came
here--oh! long before."

Dear old klootchman! I knew by the dusk in her eyes that she was
back in her Land of Legends, and that soon I would be the richer in
my hoard of Indian lore. She sat, still leaning on her paddle; her
eyes, half-closed, rested on the distant outline of the blurred
heights across the Inlet. I shall not further attempt her broken
English, for this is but the shadow of her story, and without her
unique personality the legend is as a flower that lacks both color
and fragrance. She called it "The Lost Salmon-run."

"The wife of the Great Tyee was but a wisp of a girl, but all the world
was young in those days; even the Fraser River was young and small, not
the mighty water it is now; but the pink salmon crowded its throat just
as they do now, and the tillicums caught and salted and smoked the fish
just as they have done this year, just as they will always do. But it
was yet winter, and the rains were slanting and the fogs drifting,
when the wife of the Great Tyee stood before him and said:

"'Before the salmon-run I shall give to you a great gift. Will you
honor me most if it is the gift of a boy-child or a girl-child?'
The Great Tyee loved the woman. He was stern with his people, hard
with his tribe; he ruled his council-fires with a will of stone.
His medicine-men said he had no human heart in his body; his
warriors said he had no human blood in his veins. But he clasped
this woman's hands, and his eyes, his lips, his voice, were gentle
as her own, as he replied: