ealth--the abode
of bliss--the red-man's haven of rest--was a very important act. It may
not seem so to the reader, but it was so to the savage. The very smell
of the place was to him delicious--and no wonder, for even to more
cultivated nostrils there is an odour about the contents of a
miscellaneous store--such as tea, molasses, grindstones, coffee, brown
paper, woollen cloths, sugar, fish-hooks, raisins, scalping-knives, and
soap--which is pleasantly suggestive.

Entering, then, with the dozen Indians, this important place, of which I
was the chief and only clerk, Lumley salesman and trader, and Salamander
warehouseman, the door was shut. Becoming instantly aware of a sudden
diminution in the light, I looked at the windows and observed a
flattened brown nose, a painted face and glaring eyes in the centre of
nearly every pane!

When I looked at this band of powerful, lithe, wiry, covetous savages,
and thought of the hundreds of others whom they could summon by a single
war-whoop to their side, and of the smallness of our own party, I could
not help feeling that moral influence was a powerful factor in the
affairs of man. No doubt they were restrained to some extent by the
certain knowledge that, if they attacked and killed us, and appropriated
our goods without the preliminary ceremony of barter, the white men
would not only decline to send them goods in future, but would organise
a force to hunt down and slay the murderers: nevertheless, savages are
not much given to prudential reasoning when their cupidity or passions
are roused, and I cannot help thinking that we owed our safety, under
God, to the belief in the savage mind that men who put themselves so
completely in their power, as we did, and who looked so unsuspicious of
evil, _must_ somehow be invulnerable.

Be that as it may, we calmly acted as if there could be no question at
all about our being their masters. Lumley conveyed that impression,
however, without the slightest assumption of dignity. He was all
kindness, gentleness, and urbanity, yet treated them with that
unassertive firmness which a father exercises--or ought to exercise--
towards a child.

"Now then, Salamander," said Lumley, when he was inside the counter, and
the Indians stood in a group on the other side, "tell the principal
chief to open his pack."

Lumley, I may remark, made use of Salamander as an interpreter, until he
found that the dialect of those Indians was not very diffe