A rusty but efficient hook was attached to the line, and Louis,
who was the finder, was quite overjoyed at his good fortune in making so
valuable an addition to his fishing-tackle. Hector got only an odd worn-out
mocassin, which he chucked into the little pond in disdain; while Catharine
declared she would keep the old tin pot as a relic, and carefully deposited
it in the canoe.
As they made their way into the interior of the island, they found that
there were a great many fine sugar maples which had been tapped by some
one, as the boys thought, by the old trapper; but Indiana, on examining the
incisions in the trees, and the remnants of birch-bark vessels that lay
mouldering on the earth below them, declared them to have been the work
of her own people; and long and sadly did the young girl look upon these
simple memorials of a race of whom she was the last living remnant. The
young girl stood there in melancholy mood, a solitary, isolated being, with
no kindred tie upon the earth to make life dear to her; a stranger in the
land of her fathers, associating with those whose ways were not her ways,
nor their thoughts her thoughts; whose language was scarcely known to her,
whose God was not the God of her fathers.
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