“I do not care. I have caught trout enough to last my lifetime, and I will have a little rest.”
With that he turned over, incontinently went to sleep, and no efforts on our parts, nor shouts from the guides, who with delight imitated the cry with which he had been accustomed to wake them, could rouse him till eleven o’clock. Apparently much refreshed, he eat a light lunch preparatory to a more substantial dinner, the hour for which had almost arrived. Getting up at eleven o’clock in the woods is equivalent to sleeping till four in the afternoon in the city.
Somewhat moved by his complaints, and having plenty of leisure-time, I devoted myself to providing for dinner the best our larder afforded: soup made from preserved vegetables furnishing the first course; trout, larded and fried, the second; broiled duck, garnished with thin pieces of pork, the third; and such entremets as boiled rice, chow-chow, and the like, closing with a dessert of that remarkable and ill-named preparation called corn-starch, one of the most valuable discoveries for the city-bred explorer of the woods.
Corn-starch is a remarkable edible, supplying the greatest variety possible, never seeming to result in the same production, and furnishing a subject of untiring wonder as to what form it will take next. On some days it would be beautiful, transparent, bluish jelly, then it would be a solid, opaque white, and again a dusky brown semi-liquid substance; frequently it resembled pap, and now and then would be full of doughy lumps, as though endeavoring to effect an experimental pot-pie; sometimes it tasted of liquorice, at others it seemed flavored with molasses; but generally it had not the slightest particle of taste. I never could calculate on a result; if I tried to obtain jelly, I made pap; if pap was my purpose, pot-pie would be the product.
Don eat it daily in a state of bewilderment bordering on idiocy, inquiring regularly after the first taste: “What have we here, now?” But once, when brown instead of white sugar was used, and effectually obliterated all other flavor, he made what young ladies call a face. The inventor of corn-starch must be a wonderful man, but it is to be desired that he would reduce his bantling to a little better state of subjection, and put on his labels directions more applicable to the woods, where milk and moulds and flavoring extracts are not to be had, and ice-creams are a reminiscence of the past.
Monotony is the drawback to life in the woods, and corn-starch is doubly welcome on that account. It is nutritious, being composed of the essential portions of the grain, is compact, and easily protected from wet; it furnishes an astonishing variety of desserts where any dessert is a luxury, and it is an admirable addition to one’s stores, though I wish it had a little more taste.
The dinner, including the corn-starch dessert, was a success, and revived Don’s spirits, so that he was up betimes thereafter during our stay at the Harmony.
With reluctance we bade farewell to the pretty stream, whose soothing murmurs, grateful shade, and wild scenery invited us to remain; and our eyes lingered on the hills from which it springs, as we slowly passed out of Batchawaung Bay on the route to Gros Cap and the Sault. But, aware that our limited time was almost expired, we pushed on our homeward way, stopping to dine at the camp-ground near its mouth. Here we found, amid the débris of ancient wigwams, the bleached skulls of numerous beavers, and were surprised at the peculiar formation of their long, mordant teeth. We had frequently noticed logs of considerable diameter that had been cut through by these powerful natural saws, and that bore the long furrows that they made; but were astonished to find, in extracting these teeth from the skull, that they constituted nearly a semicircle. Worn as they would be by severe and continued use, nature had made this provision to supply the rapid waste, and the portion of the ivory concealed in the skull was fully two inches long. Don collected several, and finding a peculiarly large specimen, muttered, on withdrawing the teeth, that it must be the remnants of
“Ahmeek, the king of beavers.”
Before reaching Gros Cap we struck and lost, by the fouling of our trolling lines, which were both out together, a very large lake trout. This fish, in spite of his size, gave so little play that we were scarcely aware that we had hooked him, and were astonished when we saw his immense proportions as he came near the boat. We scarcely considered his loss a disappointment.