“What was the name of the great fight—­did you ever hear it?” I asked, wondering how much he knew of events which took place at the other side of the world a century agone.

“Yes,” he said, carefully, thoughtfully; “I hear the name sometime in London when I there.  Railroad station there—­same name.”

“Was it Waterloo?” I asked.

He nodded quickly, without a shadow of hesitation.  “That the one,” he replied.  “That’s it, Waterloo.”

THE LURE IN STANLEY PARK

There is a well-known trail in Stanley Park that leads to what I always love to call the “Cathedral Trees”—­that group of some half-dozen forest giants that arch overhead with such superb loftiness.  But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that teem with the sap and blood of life.  There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between you and the far skies.  No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles, are as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading about their feet.  They are the acme of Nature’s architecture, and in building them she has outrivalled all her erstwhile conceptions.  She will never originate a more faultless design, never erect a more perfect edifice.  But the divinely moulded trees and the man-made cathedral have one exquisite characteristic in common.  It is the atmosphere of holiness.  Most of us have better impulses after viewing a stately cathedral, and none of us can stand amid that majestic forest group without experiencing some elevating thoughts, some refinement of our coarser nature.  Perhaps those who read this little legend will never again look at those cathedral trees without thinking of the glorious souls they contain, for according to the Coast Indians they do harbor human souls, and the world is better because they once had the speech and the hearts of mighty men.

My tillicum did not use the word “lure” in telling me this legend.  There is no equivalent for the word in the Chinook tongue, but the gestures of his voiceful hands so expressed the quality of something between magnetism and charm that I have selected this word “lure” as best fitting what he wished to convey.  Some few yards beyond the cathedral trees, an overgrown disused trail turns into the dense wilderness to the right.  Only Indian eyes could discern that trail, and the Indians do not willingly go to that part of the park to the right of the great group.  Nothing in this, nor yet the next world would tempt a Coast Indian into the compact centres of the wild portions of the park, for therein, concealed cunningly, is the “lure” they all believe in.  There is not a tribe in the entire district that does not know of this strange legend.  You will hear the tale from those that gather at Eagle Harbor for the fishing, from the Fraser River tribes,