home safe at last, it would be
worth a little trouble and privation to have seen it."

"Something new again: wonders will never cease," said the trapper,
holding up a vessel of some kind of heavy material, oval at the bottom,
and capable of containing some two gallons.

"It looks like a dinner kettle; but how could a dinner kettle get
here?"

"You don't think the people that used to live here lived without
eating, do you?" said Howe.

"Or, that they knew how to build houses like this, and did not know how
to make a dinner pot."

The rest thought they must have known how to do so natural a thing, as
the proof of it was before them, and then the question arose; could
they use it themselves? "For, if we can," said Jane, "we can have such
nice stews and soups."

"Which we can eat with a _split stick_, as we do our meat, especially
the _soup_," said Edward.

"We can have some nice wooden spoons made for that," replied the
trapper. "I really think the kettle can be put in a cookable order, by
taking off a coat or two of rust."

"Here is another just like it," said the chief, dragging out a similar
vessel.

"You see," said Howe, "the people must not only have eaten like
civilized people, but had a good appetite, or we should not find so
many vessels in one place."

The room being cleansed, the fruit and dried venison were removed from
the warm room, and the next day they began to gather in their store of
nuts. Butternuts, walnuts, and hickory nuts, were gathered in large
quantities, as well as acorns which, when roasted, formed a delicious
as well as nutritious food. Chestnuts were also gathered, as well as
the pine knots; these last were mostly for the light they would give
when burning, the only thing excepting their fire, which they were
dependent on to illumine their house. The collection of these occupied
them a number of days. Then the chief and Edward took the baskets, and
went down the stream in search of yampa, a root much used for food by
the Indians. This they found in abundance, about two miles distant, and
collected a number of baskets full of it.

When these precautionary measures were completed, they felt a security
and satisfaction about them which they had not felt before. The fact of
their being lost was shorn of half its terrors. Their door was
barricaded against the cold and starvation. Sidney had made up his mind
it was his fate to have the worst of the trouble; for, weak in body,
his arm s