protect his hand, and in his right hand he takes a pair of pincers, tied together at the joint with a thong. Holding the piece of flint in his left hand he breaks off from the edge of it a tiny fragment with the pincers, by a twisting or wrenching motion. This piece is often reversed in the hand, so that the edges may be symmetrical.

The bows are manufactured by the mountaineers. They are made of cedar. This wood is exceedingly brittle and dry, and is then the poorest possible material for bows; but by anointing it every day with deer's marrow, while it is drying, the Indian completely overcomes this deficiency. The bow is taken from the white, or sappy part of the cedar, the outside of the tree being also the outside of the bow. It is scraped and polished down with wonderful painstaking, so that it may bend evenly, and the ends are generally carved so as to point back slightly. Then the Indian takes a quantity of deer's sinew, splits it up with flint into small fibres, and glues them on the outside, or flat back, of the weapon until it becomes semi-cylindrical in shape. These strings of sinew, being lapped around the end of the bow and doubled back a little way, impart to it wonderful strength and elasticity. The glue is made by boiling the joints of various animals, and combining the product with pitch.

Says Mr. Powers:

I saw a bow, thus carefully made, in the hands of an aged chief, and it was truly a magnificent weapon. It was about five feet long, smooth and shining, for when it becomes a little soiled the fastidious savage scrapes it slightly with flint, then anoints it afresh with marrow, and of such great

strength that it would require a giant (which some of the mountaineers might claim to be) to bend the bow in battle. The string, composed of sinew, was probably equal in strength to a sea-grass rope of three times its diameter.

These arms, so skilfully made, became almost useless to the Indians when they began to cope with the white man. In the following incident is seen with what a shock of terror the firearms of the French were first regarded by our savages, when brought into that unequal contest between barbarism and civilization so graphically disclosed in the account of Champlain's Voyages:

On the evening of the 29th July, 1609, at about ten o'clock, when the allies [the French and Indian] were gliding noiselessly along in restrained silence, as they approached the little cape that juts out into the lake at Ticonderoga, near where Fort Carillon was afterward erected by the French, and where its ruins are still to be seen, they discovered a flotilla of heavy canoes, of oak-bark, containing not far from two hundred Iroquois warriors, armed and impatient for conflict. A furor and frenzy, as of so many enraged tigers, instantly seized both parties. Champlain and his allies withdrew a short distance, an arrow's range from the shore, fastening their canoes by poles to keep them together; while the Iroquois hastened to the water's edge, drew up their canoes side by side, and began to fell trees and construct a barricade, which they were able to accomplish with marvellous facility and skill. Two boats were sent out to inquire if the Iroquois desired a fight; to which they replied that they wanted nothing so much, and, as it was now dark, at sunrise the next morning they would give them battle. The whole night was spent by both parties in loud tumultuous boasting, berating each other in the roundest terms which their savage vocabulary could furnish, insultingly charging each other with

cowardice and weakness, and declaring that they would prove the truth of these assertions, to their utter ruin, the next morning.

When the sun began to gild the mountain-tops, the combatants were ready for the fray. Champlain and his two companions, each lying low in separate canoes of the Montag nais, put on, as best they could, the light armor in uso at that period, and taking the short hand-gun, or arquebus, went on shore, concealing themselves as much as possible from the enemy. As soon as all had landed, the two parties hastily approached each other, moving with a firm and determined tread. The allies who had become fully aware of the deadly character of the hand-gun, and were anxious to see an exhibition of its deadly power-promptly opened their ranks, and Champlain marched forward in front, until he was within thirty paces of the Iroquois. When they saw him, attracted by his pale face and strange armor, they halted and gazed at him in calm bewilderment for some seconds. Three Iroquois chiefs, tall and athletic, stood in front, and could be easily distinguished by the lofty plumes that waved above their heads. They began at once to make ready for a discharge of At the same instant Champlain, perceiving this movement, levelled his piece, which had been loaded with four balls; and two chiefs fell dead, and another savage was mortally wounded by the same shot. At this the allies raised a shout, resembling thunder in its stunning effect. From both sides the whirring arrows filled the air. The two French arquebusiers, from their ambuscade in the thicket, immediately attacked in flank, pouring a deadly fire upon the enemy's right. The explosion of the firearms, altogether new to the Iroquois, the fatal effects that instantly followed, their chiefs lying dead at their feet and others fast falling, threw them into a tumultuous panic. They at once abandoned everything, arms, provisions, boats, and camp, and without any impediment the naked savages fled through the

arrows.

forest with the fleetness of the terrified deer. Champlain and his allies pursued them a mile and a half, or to the first fall in the little stream that connects Lake Champlain and Lake George. The victory was complete.

The savages thus, almost for the first time, became acquainted with a power which, together with the English, was destined to dispossess them of their native land. They had previously begun hostilities; and in 1608 we read of their attack upon a party of workmen who had set up a forge and bakery at Chatham. Three of these workmen were killed and a fourth mortally wounded; on whose burial the savages disinterred the bodies, and carried off the garments in which they had been laid to rest, at the same time overturning the cross erected to mark the spot.

We regret to add, continues the narrative, that while the voyagers were thus detained, under the very shadow of the cross they had recently erected, -the emblem of a faith that teaches love and forgiveness, they decoyed, under the guise of friendship, several of the poor savages into their power, and inhumanly butchered them in cold blood. This deed was perpetrated on the base principle of lex talionis, and yet they did not know, much less were they able to prove, that their victims were guilty, or took any part in the late affray. No form of trial was observed, no witnesses testified, and no judge adjudicated. It was a simple murder, for which we are sure any Christian's cheek would mantle with shame who should offer to it any defence or apology.

A fancy work-basket is described by Mr. Powers, seen in the possession of a Guatala woman. It evinced, as he said, cultivated taste and incredible patience:

It was of shape common for this species of basket, - round and flat, woven water-tight, of fine willow twigs. All over the outside of it, the down of woodpeckers' scalps was woven in, forming a crimson nap, which was variegated with a great number of hanging loops of strung beads, and rude outlines of pine-trees, webbed with black sprigs into the general texture. Around the edge of the rim was an upright row of little black quails' plumes, gayly nodding. There were eighty of these plumes, which would have required the capture of as many quails; and it must have taken at least one hundred and fifty woodpeckers to furnish the nap on the outside. The squaw was engaged three years in making it, working at intervals, and valued it at twenty-five dollars. No American would collect the materials and make it for four times the money.

The Modoc women make a very pretty baby-basket of fine willow-work, cylinder-shaped, with one half of it cut away, except a few inches at the ends. It is intended to be set up against the wall, or carried on the back; hence the infant is lashed perpendicularly in it, with his feet standing in the lower half of the basket, and the upper curve covering his head like a parasol. The little fellow is wrapped all around like a mummy, with nothing visible but his head; and sometimes that is bandaged back, so that he sleeps standing.

These little willow cradles remind one of the chrysalis of insects, which indeed may have been used as patterns for the observant savage, whose capacity to imitate is remarkable.

Among the Modoc Indians was found that aboriginal custom of singing an orison in the morning, as was the habit of the Algonkins.

At early daylight, before any one had come out of his