The boys in an instant
threw off their shirts and leggins, and plunged into the water with
shouts, but the girls were in before them, for they wore only a kind of
petticoat which they did not take off, but cast themselves into the river
at once and slid through the clear water like seals.
This little Indian colony on the edge of the forest extends for several
miles along the river, where its banks are highest and best adapted to the
purpose of settlement. It ends at last just below the village which bears
the name of Fort Saranae, in the neighborhood of which I was shown an
odd-looking wooden building, and was told that this was the house of
worship provided for the Indians by the government.
At Fort Huron, a village on the American side, opposite to Fort Saranae,
we stopped to land passengers. Three Indians made their appearance on the
shore, one of whom, a very large man, wore a kind of turban, and a white
blanket made into a sort of frock, with bars of black in several places,
altogether a striking costume. One of this party, a well-dressed young
man, stopped to speak with somebody in the crowd on the wharf, but the
giant in the turban, with his companion, strode rapidly by, apparently not
deigning to look at us, and disappeared in the village. He was scarcely
out of sight when I perceived a boat approaching the shore with a
curiously mottled sail. As it came nearer I saw that it was a quilt of
patchwork taken from a bed. In the bottom of the boat lay a barrel,
apparently of flour, a stout young fellow pulled a pair of oars, and a
slender-waisted damsel, neatly dressed, sat in the stern, plying a paddle
with a dexterity which she might have learned from the Chippewa ladies,
and guiding the course of the boat which passed with great speed over the
water.
We were soon upon the broad waters of Lake Huron, and when the evening
closed upon us we were already out of sight of land. The next morning I
was awakened by the sound of rain on the hurricane deck. A cool east wind
was blowing. I opened the outer door of my state-room, and snuffed the air
which was strongly impregnated with the odor of burnt leaves or grass,
proceeding, doubtless, from the burning of woods or prairies somewhere on
the shores of the lake. For mile after mile, for hour after hour, as we
flew through the mist, the same odor was perceptible: the atmosphere of
the lake was full of it.
"Will it rain all day?" I asked of a fellow-passenger, a Salem man, in a
white cravat.
"The clouds are thin," he answered; "the sun will soon burn them off."
In fact, the sun soon melted away the clouds, and before ten o'clock I was
shown, to the north of us, the dim shore of the Great Manitoulin Island,
with the faintly descried opening called the West Strait, through which a
throng of speculators in copper mines are this summer constantly passing
to the Sault de Ste.
