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 cottages, prettily screened by young trees.
Immediately beyond this was the beginning of the Chippewa settlement of
which we had been told. Log-houses, at the distance of nearly a quarter of
a mile from each other, stood in a long row beside the river, with
scattered trees about them, the largest of the forest, some girdled and
leafless, some untouched and green, the smallest trees between having been
cut away. Here and there an Indian woman, in a blue dress and bare-headed,
was walking along the road; cows and horses were grazing near the houses;
patches of maize were seen, tended in a slovenly manner and by no means
clear of bushes, but nobody was at work in the fields. Two females came
down to the bank, with paddles, and put off into the river in a birch-bark
canoe, the ends of which were carved in the peculiar Indian fashion. A
little beyond stood a group of boys and girls on the water's edge, the
boys in shirts and leggins, silently watching the steamer as it shot by
them. Still further on a group of children of both sexes, seven in number,
came running with shrill cries down the bank. It was then about twelve
o'clock, and the weather was extremely sultry. The boys in an instant
threw off their shirts and leggins, and plunged into the water with
shouts, but the girls were in before them, for they wore only a kind of
petticoat which they did not take off, but cast themselves into the river
at once and slid through the clear water like seals.
This little Indian colony on the edge of the forest extends for several
miles along the river, where its banks are highest and best adapted to the
purpose of settlement. It ends at last just below the village which bears
the name of Fort Saranae, in the neighborhood of which I was shown an
odd-looking wooden building, and was told that this was the house of
worship provided for the Indians by the government.
At Fort Huron, a village on the American side, opposite to Fort Saranae,
we stopped to land passengers. Three Indians made their appearance on the
shore, one of whom, a very large man, wore a kind of turban, and a white
blanket made into a sort of frock, with bars of black in several places,
altogether a striking costume. One of this party, a well-dressed young
man, stopped to speak with somebody in the crowd on the wharf, but the
giant in the turban, with his companion, strode rapidly by, apparently not
deigning to look at us, and disappeared in the village. He was scarcely
out of sight when I perceived a boat approaching the shore with a
curiously mottled sail. As it came nearer I saw that it was a quilt of
patchwork taken from a bed. In the bottom of the boat lay a barrel,
apparently of flour, a stout young fellow pulled a pair of oars, and a
slender-waisted damsel, neatly dressed, sat in the stern, plying a paddle
with a dexterity which she might have learned from the Chippewa ladies,
and guiding the course of the boat which passed with great speed over the
water.
We were soon upon the broad waters of Lake Huron, and when the evening
closed upon us we were already out of sight of land. The next morning I
was awakened by the sound of rain on the hurricane deck. A cool east wind
was blowing. I opened the outer door of my state-room, and snuffed the air
which was strongly impregnated with the odor of burnt leaves or grass,
proceeding, doubtless, from the burning of woods or prairies somewhere on
the shores of the lake. For mile after mile, for hour after hour, as we
flew through the mist, the same odor was perceptible: the atmosphere of
the lake was full of it.
"Will it rain all day?" I asked of a fellow-passenger, a Salem man, in a
white cravat.
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