This sport affords much pleasure through the ease with which it is performed, and the very delicate game most amply rewards the sportsman for the slight trouble. I was home again by noon, when we had some of the birds for dinner; a number of the others were hung up in the dairy to keep fresh, while the rest were cut in pieces, boiled in water with laurel leaves, spice, and isinglass, vinegar poured over them, and the whole set to cool in a large earthenware pot, in which the liquid soon becomes a jelly. Game preserved in this way remains for several weeks good and tasty.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DELAWARE INDIAN.
One day after dinner, when we had drunk coffee, my sentry shouted that a party of Indians were coming up the river, and I perceived through my telescope that they must belong to one of the civilized tribes, as they were not armed with lances, and bows and arrows, but with firearms, and wore clothes, if we may call them such, consisting of leathern breeches and jackets, and a coloured handkerchief wound round the head like a turban. There were ten Indians, who halted at the great gate of the palisade which enclosed my fort, in a large semicircle, with both its ends joining the river. They shouted "Captain," and then gave me to understand that they wished to speak with me. I went out, accompanied by Trusty, with my large gun loaded with slugs on my arm, and found that the men belonged to a tribe of friendly Delaware Indians, whose chief I knew, and who had several times camped in the very neighbourhood and paid me a visit.
They told me they had encamped several miles down the river, where they had arrived on the last evening; their chief had sent them to tell me that the prairie fire on the previous morning had been caused by the negligence of his men, but that it had spread against their will, and had not been purposely caused. Then they asked whether the chief would be allowed to visit me, and rode back to camp after I had appointed his visit for the morrow.