rt was too heavy; she was suffering from thirst, and on pronouncing
the Indian word for water, the young girl snatched up a piece of
birch-bark from the floor of the tent, and gathering the corners
together, ran to the lake, and soon returned with water in this most
primitive drinking vessel, which she held to the lips of her guest, and
she seemed amused by the long deep draught with which Catharine slaked
her thirst; and something like a gleam of hope came over her mind as she
marked the look of kindly feeling with which she caught the young Indian
girl regarding her, and she strove to overcome the choking sensation
that would from time to time rise to her throat, as she fluctuated
between hope and fear. The position of the Indian camp was so placed
that it was quite hidden from the shore, and neither could Catharine
see the mouth of the ravine, nor the steep side of the mount that her
brothers were accustomed to ascend and descend in their visits to the
lake shore, nor had she any means of making a signal to them even if she
had seen them on the beach.

The long, anxious, watchful night passed, and soon after sunrise, while
the morning mists still hung over the lake, the canoes of the Indians
were launched, and long before noon they were in the mouth of the river.
Catharine's heart sunk within her as the fast receding shores of the
lake showed each minute fainter in the distance. At midday they halted
at a fine bend in the river, where a small open place and a creek
flowing down through the woods afforded them cool water; and here they
found several tents put up and a larger party awaiting their return. The
river was here a fine, broad, deep and tranquil stream; trees of many
kinds fringed the edge; beyond was the unbroken forest, whose depths had
never been pierced by the step of man--so thick and luxuriant was the
vegetation that even the Indian could hardly have penetrated through
its dark swampy glades: far as the eye could reach, that impenetrable
interminable wall of verdure stretched away into the far off distance.

On that spot where our Indian camp then stood, are now pleasant open
meadows, with an avenue of fine pines and balsams; showing on the
eminence above, a large substantial dwelling-house surrounded by
a luxuriant orchard and garden, the property of a naval officer,
_[FN: Lt. Rubidge, whose interesting account of his early
settlement may be read in a letter inserted in Captain Basil Hall's
Letters fr