There were three ladies of our travelling party—our mother, our sister Mrs. Helm, and myself. To guard against the burning effect of the sun and the prairie winds upon our faces, I had, during some of the last days of my visit, prepared for each of us a mask of brown linen, with the eyes, nose, and mouth fitted to accommodate our features; and to enhance the hideousness of each, I had worked eye-brows, lashes, and a circle around the opening for the mouth in black silk. Gathered in plaits under the chin, and with strings to confine them above and below, they furnished a complete protection against the sun and wind, though nothing can be imagined more frightful than the appearance we presented when fully equipped. It was who should be called the ugliest.
We left amid the good wishes and laughter of our few remaining acquaintances, of whom we now took leave. Our wagon had been provided with a pair of excellent travelling horses, and sister Margaret and myself accommodated with the best pacers the country could afford, and we set off in high spirits toward the Aux Plaines—our old friend, Billy Caldwell (the Sau-ga-nash), with our brother Robert and Gholson Kercheval, accompanying us to that point of our journey.
There was no one at Barney Lawton’s when we reached there but a Frenchman and a small number of Indians. The latter in their eagerness to say “bonjour,” and shake hands with Shaw-nee-aw-kee, passed us by, apparently without observation, so my sister and I dismounted and entered the dwelling, the door of which stood open. Two Indians were seated on the floor smoking. They raised their eyes as we appeared, and never shall I forget the expression of wonder and horror depicted on the countenances of both. Their lips relaxed until the pipe of one fell upon the floor. Their eyes seemed starting from their heads, and raising their outspread hands, as if to wave us from them, they slowly ejaculated, “Manitou!” (a spirit).
As we raised our masks, and, smiling, came forward to shake hands with them, they sprang to their feet and fairly uttered a cry of delight at the sight of our familiar faces.
“Bonjour, bonjour, Maman!” was their salutation, and they instantly plunged out of doors to relate to their companions what had happened.
Our afternoon’s ride was over a prairie stretching away to the north-east. No living creature was to be seen upon its broad expanse, but flying and circling over our heads were innumerable flocks of curlews,
“Screaming their wild notes to the listening waste.”
Their peculiar shrill cry of “crack, crack, crack—rackety, rackety, rackety,” repeated from the throats of dozens as they sometimes stooped quite close to our ears, became at length almost unbearable. It seemed as if they had lost their senses in the excitement of so unusual and splendid a cortége in their hitherto desolate domain.
The accelerated pace of our horses as we approached a beautiful wooded knoll, warned us that this was to be our place of repose for the night. These animals seem to know by instinct a favorable encamping-ground, and this was one of the most lovely imaginable.
The trees, which near the lake had, owing to the coldness and tardiness of the season, presented the pale-yellow appearance of unfledged goslings, were here bursting into full leaf. The ground around was carpeted with flowers—we could not bear to have them crushed by the felling of a tree and the pitching of our tent among them. The birds sent forth their sweetest notes in the warm, lingering sunshine, and the opening buds of the young hickory and sassafras filled the air with perfume.