There were many of the uncovered wigwams standing about, one a
large oblong with three fireplaces in it. Lying near the wigwams
were old clothes of a quite civilised fashion, pots, kettles, a
wooden tub, paint-cans and brushes, paddles, a wooden shovel,
broken bones, piles of hair from the deer skins they had dressed,
and a skin stretcher. Some steel traps hung in a tree near, and
several iron pounders for breaking bones. On a stage, under two
deer-skins, were a little rifle, a shot gun, and a piece of dried
deer's meat. A long string of the bills of birds taken during the
spring, hung on a tree near the water, and besides each of the
various wigwams, in the line of them which stretched along the
south shore of the point, a whitened bone was set up on a long pole
for luck.
The river gradually increased in volume, and all previous
excitement of work in the swift water seemed to grow insignificant
when my long course in running rapids began. Perhaps it was
because the experience was new, and I did not know what to expect;
but as the little canoe careered wildly down the slope from one
lake to the next with, in the beginning, many a scrape on the rocks
of the river bed, my nervous system contracted steadily till, at
the foot where we slipped out into smooth water again, it felt as
if dipped into an astringent.
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