The stalks, round, smooth, and straight, were of service to the Indians also. Out of them they made mats and thatching for their lodges, and they served as excellent arrow-shafts, a point of fire-hardened wood, of bone, or of flint having been fixed in the end.
JIM AND KATY BRINGING THE RUSHES TO CAMP.
In warm weather these broad, submerged marshes, undulating in color-waves—green in spring, golden-yellow in midsummer, and warm reddish-brown in October—as the breeze swept across the vast extent of pliant reeds, formed the home of a great variety of animals, whose numbers were almost unlimited. There, in the darkly stained water, lurked hosts of small shells and insects—dragon-flies, beetles, and aquatic bugs and flies, whose habits were always a matter for curiosity. Then, where insects and mollusks were so numerous, of course there were plenty of fishes, great and small, the little ones feeding on the bugs and snails, the larger on them, and some giants—like the big pike—on these again. Nor did this end the list. After the big fish came the muskrat; after the muskrat—in the old days, at least—sneaked the wolverine; after the wolverine crept the stealthy panther; and for the panther an Indian lay in wait.
The marshes were full of birds, too, in the bird-season—small, piping wrens; suspicious sparrows; ducks and rails and gallinules of many kinds and many voices; herons and cranes and hawks; coming and going with the seasons, making the yellow reeds populous with busy lives, and vocal with their merriment. Now, however, all was silent.
Our travellers would have preferred skating across the marshes rather than outside upon the windy lake, but it was reported that warm springs came out of the ooze in many parts of the rice morass, keeping the ice so weak (though not melting it quite away) as to make skating unsafe. This danger was not so great, perhaps, in a winter so unusually cold as this one was proving itself to be, as it had been shown to be in milder seasons; but they did not want to run risks.
"How noisy it will be all around this islet in three months from now!" Aleck remarked, as they were preparing for bed. "Then you will hardly be able to hear yourself speak for the frogs."
"Before there were any lighthouses on the lake," said Tug, "sailing was pretty much guesswork; but my father told me the sailors, when they approached the shore, used to know where they were by listening to the bull-frogs. The bulls would call out the names of their ports, you know: San—dúsk—y! To—l-é-e-e—do! Mon—róe! De—trói-i-i-i—it!"