"No, sir," said the sailor, "we don't do anything like that here. We suppose that people ask us questions about the country because they want to know how things really are, and we tell them just what the facts are."
"Well," said Hugh, "it seems to me, from what I have seen, that the facts are strange enough here, and it wouldn't be necessary for you to stretch them a mite to astonish folks."
Soon after this Hugh and Jack went back to the place where they had been sitting, in the shelter of the deck cabin, and sat there looking over the beautiful view that was stretched out before them. Neither said very much. Both were impressed by the beauty of the scene and the novelty of their surroundings; for neither of them had ever seen anything like it before.
"I tell you, son," said Hugh, "this here is a wonderful country to me, and I never saw anything to match it. You see it's the first time that I ever got down to the edge of the salt water. I don't know what to make of it all. Everything is different; the mountains and timber, the people, the animals, and the birds. And as for fish--why! I never supposed there was any place in the world where fish were as plenty as they are here."
"Yes," said Jack, "it's surely a wonderful country. There is something new to look at every minute; and it's all just as different as can be from anything I ever saw before. I was talking to one of the passengers here a little while ago and he told me that these Indians here live almost altogether on fish. They dig clams and catch mussels and catch the salmon and the herrings and those little fish this sailor was talking about; and they kill seals and porpoises and even whales. It's all mighty strange, but doesn't it show just how people fit themselves to the conditions that surround them? Now, suppose you take one of the Blackfeet, turn him loose on his horse at the edge of the water, and how do you think he would go to work to get his next meal? Why, he would starve to death."
"He surely would," said Hugh. "Don't you know, that the things these Indians here eat would be sort of poison to the Blackfeet? It is against their medicine to eat fish or most anything that lives in the water. They think those things are not fit to eat, and many of them would starve before they would even touch them."