THE DEADLY EMBRACE OF A CUTTLEFISH.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 193, 13 September 1878, Page 4

THE DEADLY EMBRACE OF A CUTTLEFISH.

The Victorian (B. C.) Colonist says that a party of Cape Flattery or Makaw Indians, returning from a visit to their friends (the Songish of Victoria), encamped the first afternoon out on tbe beautiful Bay of Metchosen, Vancouver Island. The weather being very fine, most of the party went bathing, and amongst the number, a maiden of perhaps eighteen summers, who had accompanied.her grandfather on the trip. Desiring seclusion, she went round a point away from the other bathers, and being known as a bold swimmer, is supposed to have taken a header into deep water. However taken, ifc proved to have been a plunge into the arms of death, for when the swimmers Te-as-embled around the camp fire the girl was missed, and notwithstanding a diligent search that evening, could not be found. The following morning witb sad hearts the party left; but very eooh those in • the foremost canoe on rounding the first point saw (the water being calm and clear), a human body as if seated on the sandy sea bottom, with what seemed like a flour bag immediately behind it. The natives knew what this meant. As soon as tbe canoes got together, two of the most active young men, managed with daggers so to disable the monster (for it was a gigantid devil-fish), that the octopua with its victim was brought to the surface. The %regoi% ifap^ r> hive been com-

municated to our informant by an intelligent and respectable balf-bred woman from Metchosen, who saw tbe body of the drowned girl with some of theprehensiles of tbe mollusc still adhering to it. She compared the head of tbe octopus in size to that of a fifty pound flour sack, full ; and said the tentacles were twelve in number, of different sis-sea, and the largest about the circumference of a man's arm.