Legends of Vancouver | Page 2

the Central School of the city of Brantford, was the extent of
her educational training. But, besides this, she acquired a wide general
knowledge, having been through childhood and early girlhood a great
reader, especially of poetry. Before she was twelve years old she had
read Scott, Longfellow, Byron, Shakespeare, and such books as
Addison's "Spectator," Foster's Essays and Owen Meredith's writings.
The first periodicals to accept her poems and place them before the
public were "Gems of Poetry," a small magazine published in New
York, and "The Week," established by the late Prof. Goldwin Smith, of
Toronto, the New York "Independent" and Toronto "Saturday Night."
Since then she has contributed to most of the high-grade magazines,
both on this continent and England.
Her writings having brought her into notice, the next step in Miss
Johnson's career was her appearance on the public platform as a reciter
of her own poems. For this she had natural talent, and in the exercise of
it she soon developed a marked ability, joined with a personal
magnetism, that was destined to make her a favorite with audiences
from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Her friend, Mr. Frank Yeigh, of
Toronto, provided for a series of recitals having that scope, with the
object of enabling her to go to England to arrange for the publication of
her poems. Within two years this aim was accomplished, her book of

poems, "The White Wampum," being published by John Lane, of the
Bodley Head. She took with her numerous letters of introduction,
including one from the Governor-General, the Earl of Aberdeen, and
she soon gained both social and literary standing. Her book was
received with much favor, both by reviewers and the public. After
giving many recitals in fashionable drawing-rooms, she returned to
Canada, and made her first tour to the Pacific Coast, giving recitals at
all the cities and towns en route. Since then she has crossed the Rocky
Mountains no fewer than nineteen times.
Miss Johnson's pen had not been idle, and in 1903 the George Morang
Co., of Toronto, published her second book of poems, entitled
"Canadian Born," which was also well received.
After a number of recitals, which included Newfoundland and the
Maritime Provinces, she went to England again in 1906 and made her
first appearance in Steinway Hall, under the distinguished patronage of
Lord and Lady Strathcona. In the following year she again visited
London, returning by way of the United States, where she gave many
recitals. After another tour of Canada she decided to give up public
work, to make Vancouver, B. C., her home, and to devote herself to
literary work.
Only a woman of remarkable powers of endurance could have borne up
under the hardships necessarily encountered in travelling through
North-western Canada in pioneer days as Miss Johnson did; and shortly
after settling down in Vancouver the exposure and hardship she had
endured began to tell on her, and her health completely broke down.
For almost a year she has been an invalid, and as she is unable to attend
to the business herself, a trust has been formed by some of the leading
citizens of her adopted city for the purpose of collecting and publishing
for her benefit her later works. Among these are the beautiful Indian
Legends contained in this volume, which she has been at great pains to
collect, and a series of boys' stories, which have been exceedingly well
received by magazine readers.
During the sixteen years Miss Johnson was travelling, she had many
varied and interesting experiences. She travelled the old Battleford trail

before the railroad went through, and across the Boundary country in
British Columbia in the romantic days of the early pioneers. Once she
took an eight hundred and fifty mile drive up the Cariboo trail to the
gold fields. She has always been an ardent canoeist, and has run many
strange rivers, crossed many a lonely lake, and camped in many an
unfrequented place. These venturesome trips she made more from her
inherent love of Nature and adventure than from any necessity of her
profession.

CONTENTS
Preface
Author's Foreword
Biographical Notice
The Two Sisters
The Siwash Rock
The Recluse
The Lost Salmon-run
The Deep Waters
The Sea-Serpent
The Lost Island
Point Grey
The Tulameen Trail
The Grey Archway
Deadman's Island

A Squamish Legend of Napoleon
The Lure in Stanley Park
Deer Lake
A Royal Mohawk Chief

THE TWO SISTERS ----- THE LIONS
You can see them as you look towards the north and the west, where
the dream-hills swim into the sky amid their ever-drifting clouds of
pearl and grey. They catch the earliest hint of sunrise, they hold the last
color of sunset. Twin mountains they are, lifting their twin peaks above
the fairest city in all Canada, and known throughout