The remaining two or three days were delightfully spent, in walking or boating, or sitting at the window to see the Indians go.  This was not quite so pleasant as their coming in, though accomplished with the same rapidity; a family not taking half an hour to prepare for departure, and the departing canoe a beautiful object.  But they left behind, on all the shore, the blemishes of their stay—­old rags, dried boughs, fragments of food, the marks of their fires.  Nature likes to cover up and gloss over spots and scars, but it would take her some time to restore that beach to the state it was in before they came.

S. and I had a mind for a canoe excursion, and we asked one of the traders to engage us two good Indians, that would not only take us out, but be sure and bring us back, as we could not hold converse with them.  Two others offered their aid, beside the chief’s son, a fine looking youth of about sixteen, richly dressed in blue broadcloth, scarlet sash and leggins, with a scarf of brighter red than the rest, tied around his head, its ends falling gracefully on one shoulder.  They thought it, apparently, fine amusement to be attending two white women; they carried us into the path of the steamboat, which was going out, and paddled with all their force,—­rather too fast, indeed, for there was something of a swell on the lake, and they sometimes threw water into the canoe.  However, it flew over the waves, light as a sea-gull.  They would say, “Pull away,” and “Ver’ warm,” and, after these words, would laugh gaily.  They enjoyed the hour, I believe, as much as we.

The house where we lived belonged to the widow of a French trader, an Indian by birth, and wearing the dress of her country.  She spoke French fluently, and was very ladylike in her manners.  She is a great character among them.  They were all the time coming to pay her homage, or to get her aid and advice; for she is, I am told, a shrewd woman of business.  My companion carried about her sketch-book with her, and the Indians were interested when they saw her using her pencil, though less so than about the sun-shade.  This lady of the tribe wanted to borrow the sketches of the beach, with its lodges and wild groups, “to show to the savages,” she said.

Of the practical ability of the Indian women, a good specimen is given by McKenney, in an amusing story of one who went to Washington, and acted her part there in the “first circles,” with a tact and sustained dissimulation worthy of Cagliostro.  She seemed to have a thorough love of intrigue for its own sake, and much dramatic talent.  Like the chiefs of her nation, when on an expedition among the foe, whether for revenge or profit, no impulses of vanity or wayside seductions had power to turn her aside from carrying out her plan as she had originally projected it.

Although I have little to tell, I feel that I have learnt a great deal of the Indians, from observing them even in this broken and degraded condition.  There is a language of eye and motion which cannot be put into words, and which teaches what words never can.  I feel acquainted with the soul of this race; I read its nobler thought in their defaced figures.  There was a greatness, unique and precious, which he who does not feel will never duly appreciate the majesty of nature in this American continent.