g nets, and every species of stitching. Mrs. Squaw,
like a provident housekeeper, had whole balls of it in her traineau
ready for use; also rolls of birch-bark, which, when the skeleton wigwam
was quite ship-shape, and well interlaced with crossbars of supple
boughs, she began to wrap round in the fashion of a covering skirt.

Had crinoline been in vogue in the year 1851, Robert would have found
a parallel before his eyes, in these birch-bark flounces arranged
over a sustaining framework, in four successive falls, narrowing in
circumference as they neared the top, where a knot of bast tied the
arching timbers together. He was interested in the examination of
these forest tent cloths, and found each roll composed of six or seven
quadrangular bits of bark, about a yard square apiece, sewed into a
strip, and having a lath stitched into each end, after the manner in
which we civilised people use rollers for a map. The erection was
completed by the casting across several strings of bast, weighted at
the ends with stones, which kept all steady.

The male Indians now vouchsafed to take possession of the wigwam.
Solemnly stalking up to Andy, the chief of the party offered his pipe to
him for a puff.

'Musha thin, thank ye kindly, an' I'm glad to see ye've some notions o'
civiltude, though ye do work the wife harder than is dacent.' But after
a single 'draw,' Andy took the pipe in his fingers and looked curiously
into its bowl. 'It's the quarest tobacco I ever tasted,' he observed:
'throth if I don't think it's nothin' but chips o' bark an' dead leaves.
Here 'tis back for you, sir; it don't shute my fancy, not bein' an
Indjin yet, though I dunno what I mightn't come to.' The pipe was
received with the deepest gravity.

No outward sign had testified surprise or any other emotion, at the
discovery that white men had settled close to their 'sugar-bush,' and
of course become joint proprietors. The inscrutable sphinx-like calm of
these countenances, the strangeness of this savage life, detained Robert
most of the afternoon as by a sort of fascination. Andy's wrath at the
male indolence was renewed by finding that the squaw and her girls had
to cut and carry all the firewood needful: even the child of seven years
old worked hard at bringing in logs to the wigwam. He was unaware that
the Indian women hold labour to be their special prerogative; that this
very squaw despised him for the help he rendered her; and that the
observation