Part 10 (1/2)
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 ba.s.s-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 quant.i.ty of Indian corn. These articles had evidently const.i.tuted 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 sh.o.r.e.”
”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 the new fur cap he had made with great skill from an entire fox-skin, 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 sang and danced, and laughed and shouted, till the lonely echoes of the islands and far-off hills returned the unusual sounds, 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 sh.o.r.e, 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 ba.s.s-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 as great apparent ease as a London or an 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 the steep bank, and soon distanced her companions, to her great delight. That night Indiana cooked some of the parched rice, Indian fas.h.i.+on, with venison, and they enjoyed the novelty very much; it made an excellent subst.i.tute 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 might have formed a subst.i.tute 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 fas.h.i.+on. By placing a pad of soft fur in front of the head, she could carry heavy loads with great ease. The mat, she said, would be useful for drying the rice she meant to store.
The 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 subst.i.tute 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 knees; light vests, bordered with fur, completed the upper part; and leggings, terminated at the ankles by knotted fringes of doeskin, with moccasins turned over with a band of squirrel fur, completed the novel 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 part, regarded them as most skilful dressmakers, and were never tired of admiring and commending their ingenuity in the 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 a.s.sume 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 gra.s.s fall in ridges beneath his scythe.
Many bushels of wild rice were thus collected. Nothing could be more delightful than this sort of work to our young people, and merrily they worked, and laughed and sang as they came home each day with their light bark laden with a store of grain which 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 ba.s.s, 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 gla.s.sy, 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 bow and arrow and the fis.h.i.+ng-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, milking 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 G.o.d 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 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 fis.h.i.+ng, 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 compa.s.sionate interest, and lost no opportunity of trying to enlighten her darkened mind on the subject of belief in the G.o.d 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.
Catharine was glad when, after many 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 wors.h.i.+p and the desire to do that which she had been told was right were, doubtless, sacrifices 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 bloodshed and cruelty as among the highest of human virtues, and gloried in those deeds of vengeance at which the Christian mind revolts with horror.