Go to the ant. -- Proverbs.
IT was now the middle of September:
the weather, which had continued serene and beautiful
for some time, with dewy nights and misty mornings,
began to show symptoms of the change of season usual
at the approach of the equinox. Sudden squalls
of wind, with hasty showers, would come sweeping over
the lake; the nights and mornings were damp and chilly.
Already the tints of autumn were beginning to crimson
the foliage of the oaks, and where the islands were
visible, the splendid colours of the maple shone out
in gorgeous contrast with the deep verdure of the
evergreens and light golden-yellow of the poplar; but
lovely as they now looked, they had not yet reached
the meridian of their beauty, which a few frosty nights
at the close of the month was destined to bring to
perfection a glow of splendour to gladden
the eye for a brief space, before the rushing winds
and rains of the following month were to sweep them
away, and scatter them abroad upon the earth.
One morning, just after a night of
heavy rain and wind, the two boys went down to see
if the lake was calm enough for trying the raft, which
Louis had finished before the coming on of the bad
weather. The water was rough and crested with
mimic waves, and they felt not disposed to launch
the raft on so stormy a surface, but they stood looking
out over the lake and admiring the changing foliage,
when Hector pointed out to his cousin a dark speck
dancing on the waters, between the two nearest islands.
The wind, which blew very strong still from the north-east,
brought the object nearer every minute. At first
they thought it might be a pine-branch that was floating
on the surface, when as it came bounding over the
waves, they perceived that it was a birch-canoe, but
impelled by no visible arm. It was a strange sight
upon that lonely lake to see a vessel of any kind
afloat, and, on first deciding that it was a canoe,
the boys were inclined to hide themselves among the
bushes, for fear of the Indians, but curiosity got
the better of their fears.
“The owner of yonder little
craft is either asleep or absent from her; for I see
no paddle, and it is evidently drifting without any
one to guide it,” said Hector, after intently
watching the progress of the tempest-driven vessel;
assured as it approached nearer that such was the
case, they hurried to the beach just as a fresh gust
had lodged the canoe among the branches of a fallen
cedar which projected out some way into the water.
By creeping along the trunk of the
tree, and trusting at times to the projecting boughs,
Louis, who was the most active and the lightest of
weight, succeeded in getting within reach of the canoe,
and with some trouble and the help of a stout branch
that Hector handed to him, he contrived to moor her
in safety on the shore, taking the precaution of hauling
her well up on the shingle, lest the wind and water
should set her afloat again. “Hec, there
is something in this canoe, the sight of which will
gladden your heart,” cried Louis with a joyful
look. “Come quickly, and see my treasures.”
“Treasures! You may well
call them treasures,” exclaimed Hector, as he
helped Louis to examine the contents of the canoe,
and place them on the shore, side by side.
The boys could hardly find words to
express their joy and surprise at the discovery of
a large jar of parched rice, a tomahawk, an Indian
blanket almost as good as new, a large mat rolled up
with a bass bark rope several yards in length wound
round it, and what was more precious than all, an
iron three-legged pot in which was a quantity of Indian
corn. These articles had evidently constituted
the stores of some Indian hunter or trapper; possibly
the canoe had been imperfectly secured and had drifted
from its moorings during the gale of the previous night,
unless by some accident the owner had fallen into the
lake and been drowned; this was of course only a matter
of conjecture on which it was useless to speculate,
and the boys joyfully took possession of the good
fortune that had so providentially been wafted, as
it were, to their very feet.
“It was a capital chance for
us, that old cedar having been blown down last night
just where it was,” said Louis; “for if
the canoe had not been drawn into the eddy, and stopped
by the branches, we might have lost it. I trembled
when I saw the wind driving it on so rapidly that it
would founder in the deep water, or go off to Long
Island.”
“I think we should have got
it at Pine-tree Point,” said Hector, “but
I am glad it was lodged so cleverly among the cedar
boughs. I was half afraid you would have fallen
in once or twice, when you were trying to draw it
nearer to the shore.” “Never fear
for me, my friend; I can cling like a wild cat when
I climb. But what a grand pot! What delightful
soups, and stews, and boils, Catharine will make!
Hurrah!” and Louis tossed up his new fur cap,
that he had made with great skill from an entire fox
skin, in the air, and cut sundry fantastic capers which
Hector gravely condemned as unbecoming his mature age;
(Louis was turned of fifteen;) but with the joyous
spirit of a little child he sung, and danced, and
laughed, and shouted, till the lonely echoes of the
islands and far-off hills returned the unusual sound,
and even his more steady cousin caught the infection,
and laughed to see Louis so elated.
Leaving Hector to guard the prize,
Louis ran gaily off to fetch Catharine to share his
joy, and come and admire the canoe, and the blanket,
and the tripod, and the corn, and the tomahawk.
Indiana accompanied them to the lake shore, and long
and carefully she examined the canoe and its contents,
and many were the plaintive exclamations she uttered
as she surveyed the things piece by piece, till she
took notice of the broken handle of an Indian paddle
which lay at the bottom of the vessel; this seemed
to afford some solution to her of the mystery, and
by broken words and signs she intimated that the paddle
had possibly broken in the hand of the Indian, and
that in endeavouring to regain the other part, he
had lost his balance and been drowned. She showed
Hector a rude figure of a bird engraved with some
sharp instrument, and rubbed in with a blue colour.
This, she said, was the totem or crest of the chief
of the tribe, and was meant to represent a crow.
The canoe had belonged to a chief of that name.
While they were dividing the contents of the canoe
among them to be carried to the shanty, Indiana, taking
up the bass-rope and the blanket, bundled up the most
of the things, and adjusting the broad thick part
of the rope to the front of her head, she bore off
the burden with great apparent ease, as a London or
Edinburgh porter would his trunks and packages, turning
round with a merry glance and repeating some Indian
words with a lively air as she climbed with apparent
ease the steep bank, and soon distanced her companions,
to her great enjoyment. That night, Indiana cooked
some of the parched rice, Indian fashion, with venison,
and they enjoyed the novelty very much it
made an excellent substitute for bread, of which they
had been so long deprived.
Indiana gave them to understand that
the rice harvest would soon be ready on the lake,
and that now they had got a canoe, they would go out
and gather it, and so lay by a store to last them for
many months.
This little incident furnished the
inhabitants of the shanty with frequent themes for
discussion. Hector declared that the Indian corn
was the most valuable of their acquisitions.
“It will insure us a crop, and bread and seed-corn
for many years,” he said; he also highly valued
the tomahawk, as his axe was worn and blunt.
Louis was divided between the iron
pot and the canoe. Hector seemed to think the
raft, after all, might have formed a substitute for
the latter; besides, Indiana had signified her intention
of helping him to make a canoe. Catharine declared
in favour of the blanket, as it would make, after
thorough ablutions, warm petticoats with tight bodices
for herself and Indiana. With deer-skin leggings,
and a fur jacket, they should be comfortably clad.
Indiana thought the canoe the most precious, and was
charmed with the good jar and the store of rice:
nor did she despise the packing rope, which she soon
showed was of use in carrying burdens from place to
place, Indian fashion: by placing a pad of soft
fur in front of the head, she could carry heavy loads
with great ease. The mat, she said, was useful
for drying the rice she meant to store. The very
next day after this adventure, the two girls set to
work, and with the help of Louis’s large knife,
which was called into requisition as a substitute
for scissors, they cut out the blanket dresses, and
in a short time made two comfortable and not very
unsightly garments: the full, short, plaited
skirts reached a little below the knee; light vests
bordered with fur completed the upper part, and leggings,
terminated at the ankles by knotted fringes of the
doe-skin, with mocassins turned over with a band
of squirrel fur, completed the novel but not very
unbecoming costume; and many a glance of innocent satisfaction
did our young damsels cast upon each other, when they
walked forth in the pride of girlish vanity to display
their dresses to Hector and Louis, who, for their
parts, regarded them as most skilful dress-makers,
and were never tired of admiring and commending their
ingenuity in the cutting, making and fitting, considering
what rude implements they were obliged to use in the
cutting out and sewing of the garments.
The extensive rice beds on the lake
had now begun to assume a golden tinge which contrasted
very delightfully with the deep blue waters looking,
when lighted up by the sunbeams, like islands of golden-coloured
sand. The ears, heavy laden with the ripe grain,
drooped towards the water. The time of the rice-harvest
was at hand, and with light and joyous hearts our
young adventurers launched the canoe, and, guided
in their movements by the little squaw, paddled to
the extensive aquatic fields to gather it in, leaving
Catharine and Wolfe to watch their proceedings from
the raft, which Louis had fastened to a young tree
that projected out over the lake, and which made a
good landing-place, likewise a wharf where they could
stand and fish very comfortably. As the canoe
could not be overloaded on account of the rice-gathering,
Catharine very readily consented to employ herself
with fishing from the raft till their return.
The manner of procuring the rice was
very simple. One person steered the canoe with
the aid of the paddle along the edge of the rice beds,
and another with a stick in one hand, and a curved
sharp-edged paddle in the other, struck the heads
off as they bent them over the edge of the stick;
the chief art was in letting the heads fall into the
canoe, which a little practice soon enabled them to
do as expertly as the mower lets the grass fall in
ridges beneath his scythe.
Many bushels of wild rice were thus
collected. Nothing could he more delightful than
this sort of work to our young people, and merrily
they worked, and laughed, and sung, as they came home
each day with their light bark, laden with a store
of grain that they knew would preserve them from starving
through the long, dreary winter that was coming on.
The canoe was a source of great comfort
and pleasure to them; they were now able to paddle
out into the deep water, and fish for masquinonje and
black bass, which they caught in great numbers.
Indiana seemed quite another creature
when, armed with a paddle of her own carving, she
knelt at the head of the canoe and sent it flying over
the water; then her dark eyes, often so vacant and
glassy, sparkled with delight, and her teeth gleamed
with ivory whiteness as her face broke into smiles
and dimples.
It was delightful then to watch this
child of nature, and see how innocently happy she
could be when rejoicing in the excitement of healthy
exercise, and elated by a consciousness of the power
she possessed of excelling her companions in feats
of strength and skill which they had yet to acquire
by imitating her.
Even Louis was obliged to confess
that the young savage knew more of the management
of a canoe, and the use of the bows and arrows, and
the fishing-line, than either himself or his cousin.
Hector was lost in admiration of her skill in all
these things; and Indiana rose highly in his estimation,
the more he saw of her usefulness.
“Every one to his craft,”
said Louis, laughing; “the little squaw has
been brought up in the knowledge and practice of such
matters from her babyhood; perhaps if we were to set
her to knitting, and spinning, and milking of cows,
and house-work, and learning to read, I doubt if she
would prove half as quick as Catharine or Mathilde.”
“I wonder if she knows anything
of God or our Saviour,” said Hector, thoughtfully.
“Who should have taught her?
for the Indians are all heathens;” replied Louis.
“I have heard my dear mother
say, the Missionaries have taken great pains to teach
the Indian children down about Quebec and Montreal,
and that so far from being stupid, they learn very
readily,” said Catharine.
“We must try and make Indiana
learn to say her prayers; she sits quite still, and
seems to take no notice of what we are doing when we
kneel down, before we go to bed,” observed Hector.
“She cannot understand what
we say,” said Catharine; for she knows so little
of our language yet, that of course she cannot comprehend
the prayers, which are in other sort of words than
what we use in speaking of hunting, and fishing, and
cooking, and such matters.”
“Well, when she knows more of
our way of speaking, then we must teach her; it is
a sad thing for Christian children to live with an
untaught pagan,” said Louis, who, being rather
bigoted in his creed, felt a sort of uneasiness in
his own mind at the poor girl’s total want of
the rites of his church; but Hector and Catharine
regarded her ignorance with feelings of compassionate
interest, and lost no opportunity that offered, of
trying to enlighten her darkened mind on the subject
of belief in the God who made, and the Lord who saved
them. Simply and earnestly they entered into
the task as a labour of love, and though for a long
time Indiana seemed to pay little attention to what
they said, by slow degrees the good seed took root
and brought forth fruit worthy of Him whose Spirit
poured the beams of spiritual light into her heart:
but my young readers must not imagine these things
were the work of a day the process was
slow, and so were the results, but they were good
in the end.
And Catharine was glad when, after
many go months of patient teaching, the Indian girl
asked permission to kneel down with her white friend,
and pray to the Great Spirit and His Son in the same
words that Christ Jesus gave to his disciples; and
if the full meaning of that holy prayer, so full of
humility and love, and moral justice, was not fully
understood by her whose lips repeated it, yet even
the act of worship and the desire to do that which
she had been told was right, was, doubtless, a sacrifice
better than the pagan rites which that young girl
had witnessed among her father’s people, who,
blindly following the natural impulse of man in his
depraved nature, regarded deeds of blood and cruelty
as among the highest of human virtues, and gloried
in those deeds of vengeance at which the Christian
mind revolts with horror.
Indiana took upon herself the management
of the rice, drying, husking and storing it, the two
lads working under her direction. She caused
several forked stakes to be cut and sharpened and driven
into the ground; on these were laid four poles, so
as to form a frame, over which she then stretched
the bass-mat, which she secured by means of forked
pegs to the frame on the mat; she then spread out the
rice thinly, and lighted a fire beneath, taking good
care not to let the flame set fire to the mat, the
object being rather to keep up a strong, slow heat,
by means of the red embers. She next directed
the boys to supply her with pine or cedar boughs,
which she stuck in close together, so as to enclose
the fire within the area of the stakes. This was
done to concentrate the heat and cause it to bear
upwards with more power; the rice being frequently
stirred with a sort of long-handled, flat shovel.
After the rice was sufficiently dried, the next thing
to be done was separating it from the husk, and this
was effected by putting it by small quantities into
the iron pot, and with a sort of wooden pestle or
beetle, rubbing it round and round against the sides. If they had not had the iron pot, a wooden
trough must have been substituted in its stead.
When the rice was husked, the loose
chaff was winnowed from it in a flat basket like a
sieve, and it was then put by in coarse birch baskets,
roughly sewed with leather-wood bark, or bags made
of matting, woven by the little squaw from the cedar-bark.
A portion was also parched, which was simply done
by putting the rice dry into the iron pot, and setting
it on hot embers, stirring the grain till it burst:
it was then stored by for use. Rice thus prepared
is eaten dry, as a substitute for bread, by the Indians.
The lake was now swarming with wild fowl of various
kinds; crowds of ducks were winging their way across
it from morning till night, floating in vast flocks
upon its surface, or rising in noisy groups if an
eagle or fish-hawk appeared sailing with slow, majestic
circles above them, then settling down with noisy splash
upon the calm water. The shores, too, were covered
with these birds, feeding on the fallen acorns which
fell ripe and brown with every passing breeze; the
berries of the dogwood also furnished them with food;
but the wild rice seemed the great attraction, and
small shell-fish and the larvae of many insects that
had been dropped into the waters, there to come to
perfection in due season, or to form a provision for
myriads of wild fowl that had come from the far north-west
to feed upon them, guided by that instinct which has
so beautifully been termed by one of our modern poétesses,
“God’s gift to the weak”