search for a new
homesite.

During this visit we began seeing Indians in considerable numbers. They
seemed to be a listless lot, with no thought for the future, or even for
the immediate present. The Indians in those days seemed to work or play
by spurts and spells. Here and there we saw a family industriously
pursuing some object; but as a class they seemed to me the laziest set
of people on earth.

That opinion was materially modified later, as I became better
acquainted with their habits. I have found just as industrious people,
both men and women, among the Indians as among the whites. The workers,
it may be said, are less numerous among the men; the women are all
industrious.

Should we camp here and spy out the land, or should we go forward and
see what lay before us? After a sober second thought, we realized that
we had nothing to trade but labor; and we had not come as far as this to
be laborers for hire. We had come to find a place to make a farm, and a
farm we were going to have. Again we set about searching for claims, and
the more we searched the less we liked the look of things.

Finally, on the fourth day, after a long, wearisome tramp, we cast off
at high tide, and in a dead calm, to continue our cruise. Oliver soon
dropped into a comfortable afternoon nap, leaving me in full command. As
the sun shone warm and the tide was taking us rapidly in the direction
we wanted to go, why shouldn't I doze a little too, even if we did miss
some of the sightseeing?

I was aroused from my nap by Oliver's exclaiming, "What is that?" Then,
half to himself, "As I live, it's a deer swimming out here in the bay!"

"It surely can't be," I responded, three quarters asleep.

"That's what it is!" he asserted.

We were wide awake now and gave chase. Very soon we caught up with the
animal and succeeded in throwing a rope over its horns. By this time we
had drifted into the Narrows, and we soon found we had something more
important to do than to tow a deer.

We were among the tide rips of the Sound. Turning the deer loose, we
pulled our best for the shore, and found shelter in an eddy. A
perpendicular bluff rose from the highwater mark, leaving no place for
camp fire or bed.

The tide seemed to roll in waves and with contending forces of currents
and counter currents, yet all moving in a general direction. It was our
first introduction to a genuine tide rip. The waters boiled as if in a
veritable caldron, swelling up