oil."

"And what has been the success of the plan?" I asked.

"It has met with no success at all," he answered. "The worst thing that
the government could do for these people is to give them every thing as it
has done, and leave them under no necessity to provide for themselves.
They chop over a little land, an acre or two to a family; their squaws
plant a little corn and a few beans, and this is the extent of their
agriculture. They pass their time in hunting and fishing, or in idleness.
They find deer and bears in the woods behind them, and fish in the St.
Clair before their doors, and they squander their yearly pensions. In one
respect they are just like white men, they will not work if they can live
without."

"What fish do they find in the St. Clair?"

"Various sorts. Trout and white-fish are the finest, but they are not so
abundant at this season. Sturgeon and pike are just now in season, and the
pike are excellent."

One of us happening to observe that the river might easily be crossed by
swimming, the settler answered:

"Not so easily as you might think. The river is as cold as a well, and the
swimmer would soon be chilled through, and perhaps taken with the cramp.
It is this coldness of the water which makes the fish so fine at this
season."

This mention of sturgeons tempts me to relate an anecdote which I heard as
I was coming up the Hudson. A gentleman who lived east of the river, a
little back of Tivoli, caught last spring one of these fish, which weighed
about a hundred and sixty pounds. He carried it to a large pond near his
house, the longest diameter of which is about a mile, and without taking
it out of the net in which he had caught it, he knotted part of the meshes
closely around it, and attaching them to a pair of lines like reins, put
the creature into the water. To the end of the lines he had taken care to
attach a buoy, to mark the place of the fish in the pond. He keeps a small
boat, and when he has a mind to make a water-excursion, he rows to the
place where the buoy is floating, ties the lines to the boat and, pulling
them so as to disturb the fish, is drawn backward and forward with great
rapidity over the surface. The pond, in its deepest part, has only seven
feet water, so that there is no danger of being dragged under.

We now proceeded up the river, and in about two hours came to a neat
little village on the British side, with a windmill, a little church, and
two or three little