glass or milk, to
cause foreign substances to rise in a scum to the surface. When it has
been sufficiently boiled, the syrup is poured into moulds or casks to
harden.' The sugar with which the most pains have been taken is very
light-colored, and I have seen it almost white."

"Have you ever been to a sugar-camp, Miss Harson?" asked Clara, who was
wishing, like Malcolm, that she could go to one herself.

"Yes," said Miss Harson; "I did go once, in Vermont, when the family
with whom I was staying took me to see the 'sugaring off.' This is
putting it into the pans and buckets to harden after it has been
sufficiently boiled and clarified; and we younger ones, by way of
amusement, were allowed to make jack-wax."

"Oh!" exclaimed three voices at once; "what is that? Is it good to eat?"

"I thought it particularly good," was the reply, "and I am quite sure
that you would agree with me. To make it, we poured a small quantity of
hot syrup on the snow to cool; and when it was fit to eat, it was just
like wax, instead of being hard like the cakes in moulds. It took only a
few minutes, too, to make it, and it seemed a great deal nicer because
we did it ourselves. I remember that it was the last of March and very
cold, but there were big fires to get warmed at, and we had a
delightful time."

"Were there any Indians there, Miss Harson?" asked little Edith, after
being quiet for some time. Vermont was such a long way off on the map,
besides being up almost at the top, that Indians and bears and all sorts
of wild things seemed to have a right to live there.

"No," said her governess, smiling at the question; "I did not see one,
even at the sugar-camp. Yet the Indians made maple-sugar long before we
knew anything about it, and from them the white people learned how to
do it."

"Well, that's the funniest thing!" exclaimed Malcolm. "I thought that
Indians were always scalping people instead of making maple-sugar."

"They did a great many other things, though, besides fighting, and their
life was spent so much out of doors that they studied the nature of
every plant and living thing about them. The healing-properties of some
of our most valuable herbs were first discovered by the Indians, and, as
they never had any grocery-stores, the presence of trees that would
supply them with sugar was a blessing not likely to be neglected. The
devoted missionary John Brainerd first heard of this tree-sugar from
them, and it is said that he