Then he held out his pipe for the Indians to smoke with him. That is their way of making friends. But none of the Indians would touch the pipe. They thought that he had brought fire down from heaven to light his pipe. They were now sure that he fell down from the sky. They were more afraid of him than ever.
At last Captain Clark’s Indian man came. He told the other Indians that the white man did not come out of the sky. Then they smoked the pipe, and were not afraid.
QUICKSILVER BOB.
Robert Fulton was the man who set steam-boats to running on the rivers. Other men had made such boats before. But Fulton made the first good one.
When he was a boy, he lived in the town of Lan-cas-ter in Penn-syl-van-ia. Many guns were made in Lancaster. The men who made these guns put little pictures on them. That was to make them sell to the hunters who liked a gun with pictures. Little Robert Fulton could draw very well for a boy. He made some pretty little drawings. These the gun makers put on their guns.
Fulton went to the gun shops a great deal. He liked to see how things were made. He tried to make a small air gun for himself.
He was always trying to make things. He got some quick-sil-ver. He was trying to do something with it. But he would not tell what he wanted to do. So the gun-smiths called him Quick-sil-ver Bob.
He was so much in-ter-est-ed in such things, that he sometimes neg-lect-ed his lessons. He said that his head was so full of new notions, that he had not much room left for school learning.
One morning he came to school late.
“What makes you so late?” asked the teacher.