] were voted delicious, and the pure water
most refreshing, that they drank, for lack of better cups, from a large
mussel-shell which Catharine had picked up among the weeds and pebbles on
the beach.
Many children would have wandered about weeping and disconsolate, lamenting
their sad fate, or have embittered the time by useless repining, or,
perhaps, by venting their uneasiness in reviling the principal author of
their calamity--poor, thoughtless Louis; but such were not the dispositions
of our young Canadians. Early accustomed to the hardships incidental to the
lives of the settlers in the bush, these young people had learned to bear
with patience and cheerfulness privations that would have crushed the
spirits of children more delicately nurtured. They had known every degree
of hunger and nakedness; during the first few years of their lives they had
often been compelled to subsist for days and weeks upon roots and herbs,
wild fruits, and game which their fathers had learned to entrap, to decoy,
and to shoot. Thus Louis and Hector had early been initiated into the
mysteries of the chase.
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