Philippe mentioned above, and, like
him, a chief of the tribe and a renowned builder of snow-shoes, paid two
hundred and seventy-five dollars for a piano for his daughter, when I
was at Quebec, five or six years ago. Whenever I visited Philippe, that
stately man of the Hurons would usher me into a little parlor with a
sofa in it and a carpet on the floor; he would produce brandy in a cut
decanter, and cake upon a good porcelain plate, and would be merry in
French and expansive on the subject of trade.

Most of these hybrid Hurons are quite as white as their Canadian
neighbors; but they generally have the horse-tail hair, and black, beady
eye of the aborigines. The ordinary dress of the men, in winter, is a
blue blanket-coat, made with a _capuchon_, or hood, which latter is
generally trimmed with bright-colored ribbon and ornamented with beads.
Epaulettes, fashioned out of pieces of red and blue cloth, somewhat
after the pattern of a pen-wiper, impart a distinguished appearance
to the shoulders of these garments, which are rendered still more
picturesque by being tucked round the body with heavy woollen sashes,
variegated in red, blue, and yellow. Some of these sashes are heavily
beaded, and worth from five to ten dollars each; and they, as well
as the Indian blanket-coats, are to be had at the furriers' shops in
Quebec, where there is a considerable demand for them by members of
snow-shoe clubs, and others whose occupations or amusements render that
style of costume appropriate for their wear. The older women dress
in the ordinary squaw costume, with short, narrow petticoats, and
embroidered _metasses_, or leggings. When going out, they fold a blue
blanket over all, and put on a regular, unpicturesque, stove-pipe hat,
with a band of tin-foil around it,--which makes them look like one of
those mulatto coachmen one sees now and then on the box of a _bonton_
barouche, with his silver-mounted hat and double-caped blue box-coat.
The young girls are disposed to innovations upon the petticoats, and
modifications of the _metasses_. Once I saw one standing on a great gray
crag at the foot of the fall. She looked extremely picturesque at a
little distance, giving a nice bit of local color to the scene with her
scarlet legs; but on a nearer approach, much of the value of the color
disappeared before the unromantic facts of a pale-face petticoat and
patent-leather gaiter-boots. I have noticed several of the younger
people here with