Rogerson’s last piece of work was a labour of love. Not many years ago he took a trip to Scotland to see the place of his birth and to revisit the scenes of his early childhood. While in Scotland he collected, here and there, a number of pieces of fine woods from old historic buildings, etc., and these he brought back to Saint John, where in his leisure moments he designed and carved therefrom a beautiful chair, which he presented to the Saint Andrew’s Society, in whose assembly-rooms it now stands.
CHAPTER XIX.
INDIAN LORETTE.
LISH—squish!
Who is it comes so swiftly down the snowy highway? Who is it cuts “eights”, “eighty-eights” and Paisley patterns, among the snowbound trees of the northern Canadian forests? Who tames the wild, free, northern country into proper service? Who follows the fur-bearing animals to the death far in these same northern wilds? Who but the man on snow-shoes? And who makes snowshoes?
Dropping down for a week at Indian Lorette in the Province of Quebec we found “rooms” in a very quaint, steep-roofed, old house in the Indian village by the Falls of Lorette where dwell the last of the Hurons.
There we came and went—idling the mid-summer days—down the little lanes in slow and friendly fashion; coming upon children at their games; women in door-yards sewing or embroidering moccasins, ornamenting them with fancy designs in dyed moose-hair and porcupine quills; stepping into rooms where small groups of men, and occasionally a woman, were building canoes; chancing into still other rooms where men were at work making—snow-shoes.
“Oui, oui, m’sieu, madame, the Hurons of Indian Lorette ’tis they who make the snow-shoes.”
And, who are these Hurons—makers of the moccasin, the canoe, the snow-shoe?