Note 65 — Chapter VI

This means farther up the Sound; for there are villages in the interior of Vancouver Island. The Admiralty Sailing Directions declare that not a trace of the Spanish settlement now exists. This is scarcely correct, for an indistinct ridge shows the site of houses, and here and there a few bricks half hidden in the ground may be detected. I have seen a cannon ball and a Mexican dollar found there. Many of the Nootka Indians have large moustaches and whiskers, which may possibly be due to their Spanish blood, and others were decidedly Chinese-looking, a fact which may be traced to the presence of Meares's Chinese carpenters in 1778-79. Some of them can, or could, thirty years ago, by tradition, count ten in Spanish; and there is a legend in the Sound to the effect that the white men had begun to cultivate the ground, and to erect a stockade and fort; when one day a ship came with papers for the head man, who was observed to cry, and all the foreigners became sad. The next day they began moving their goods to the ship. But, as Mr. Sproat suggests, this might have reference to Meares's settlement.