ents are sufficiently significant to startle the whole
party. The dance is broken up and every one prepares to depart as fast
as he can.

Cary Singleton and his men had a sterner duty to perform by the maple
trees. They cut them down and of the trunks constructed a number of
rafts wherewith to transport the baggage and provisions of the army
across the St. Lawrence.

At the same time, the Indians of the party were detailed to build
birch-bark canoes. With their long knives they swept around the slender
trunks, making an incision as regular and precise as any surgeon might
have done on a human limb destined to amputation. The first circle was
made about one foot from the ground, the other about three feet from the
branches where the tree began to taper. This was to secure slips of
about equal length. They then ran down their knives longitudinally from
the edge of one circle to the edge of the other circle, making four or
five sections according to the size of the tree. This was to obtain
slips of about equal breadth. They next inserted the point of their
knives under the layer of bark, and with rapid action of the arm pulled
off slip after slip. As these slips fell upon the ground they rolled up
in scrolls, but other Indians as quickly unrolled them, stitched them
together with light thongs of moose or buckskin, and sharpened them at
the two extremities. In this way, three men could build a good sized
canoe, within two hours. There remained only the process of drying which
was not indispensable indeed, but contributed to the lightness and
safety of the craft.

So soon as the first canoe was made, Cary Singleton launched it, and,
accompanied by two men, made the reconnoissance which so much frightened
the gossipping laundresses. He did not approach the north shore as near
as he had intended, for fear that the women might give the alarm and
betray his design, but he saw enough through his glass to enable him to
report that the secluded basin, sheltered by dense trees, and known as
Wolfe's Cove, would be a favorable place for the landing of the invading
army. Accordingly, after three days devoted to the repose of his troops,
and the replenishing of his stores from the neighboring farm houses,
Arnold, on the night of the 13th November, undertook to cross the St.
Lawrence. He was favored by darkness and a storm, and from ten in the
evening till four in the morning, by the aid of thirty birch-bark canoes
and a few rafts, he