Ray did not care to play all by himself and he did not feel like sleeping so he asked Ganawa to show him some Indian woodcraft, and Ganawa showed him the willow, whose bark the Indians use for strings. “It [[169]]is a tall bushy willow,” he said, “and it grows almost everywhere. The Indians also use the inner bark of basswoods and white elms for strings, but these trees do not grow here. However, I know that we can find a few elms on the Michipicoten.”
All native willows have a tough stringy bark, but the common pussy willow, Salix discolor, furnishes very good strings. All these bark strings are tough and flexible only while green or wet. Even present-day Indians always keep a supply of these bark strings on hand. All of them are brittle and useless when dry, but they regain their toughness and flexibility when they are soaked in water for a short time.
Then Ganawa showed Ray how the leaves of the low, white-flowered bush called Labrador tea might be used to take the place of the tea sold by the traders. “This plant,” he explained, “and a plant which the white people call sweet fern, make a good tea in camp if you have some sugar. The sweet fern does not grow here, but it [[170]]covers much sandy land south of Lake Superior.”
The Labrador tea grows in every northern swamp, but the sweet fern the Indians often tie in bundles and take with them as they travel about to their favorite summer camping-places for picking blueberries or gathering wild rice.
The lads were surprised at the progress they could make now that they no longer paddled into every cove and wasted no time examining old camp-sites. Three days of easy travel brought them to a high and level camping ground, where a railroad now crosses the Michipicoten River.
“My sons,” spoke Ganawa, when they reached this spot, “at this place we should camp and make a store of food. For it may be that we shall have to spend a winter in this country, and you, my sons, will often wish that you had some of the berries that are now ripe in the woods, so you could eat them with your meat and fish.
“To-morrow you must each take a basket [[171]]of birch-bark and pick blueberries, which you will find in the hills and under the pines, where the sun shines through the branches.”
Blueberries were so abundant that each lad could pick about a bushel in a day, because they found many patches where the ground was literally blue.
While the boys were away gathering this wild fruit, the best in the whole of North America, Ganawa sewed together several large pieces of birch-bark and spread the whole in a sunny open place. On this birch-bark the lads emptied their filled baskets. Ganawa stayed in camp and with an improvised wooden rake he stirred and turned the berries from time to time so they would dry faster.
“It may start to rain,” he remarked, “and then our berries might spoil before we can dry them.”