bed in hunting them with candles. Even this did not
entirely destroy them; and often might our friends, by looking
telescopically through the keyhole, have seen us wandering during the
late hours of the night in our shirts looking for mosquitoes, like
unhappy ghosts doomed to search perpetually for something they can never
find. The intense, suffocating heat also added greatly to our
discomfort.

In fine weather I used to visit my friend Mr Evans at Rossville, where
I had always a hearty welcome. I remember on one occasion being obliged
to beg the loan of a canoe from an Indian, and having a romantic paddle
across part of Playgreen Lake. I had been offered a passage in a boat
which was going to Rossville, but was not to return. Having nothing
particular to do, however, at the time, I determined to take my chance
of finding a return conveyance of some kind or other. In due time I
arrived at the parsonage, where I spent a pleasant afternoon in
sauntering about the village, and in admiring the rapidity and ease with
which the Indian children could read and write the Indian language by
means of a syllable alphabet invented by their clergyman. The same
gentleman afterwards made a set of leaden types with no other instrument
than a penknife, and printed a great many hymns in the Indian language.

In the evening I began to think of returning to the fort; but no boat or
canoe could be found small enough to be paddled by one man, and as no
one seemed inclined to go with me, I began to fear that I should have to
remain all night. At last a young Indian told me he had a hunting
canoe, which I might have if I chose to venture across the lake in it,
but it was very small. I instantly accepted his offer; and, bidding
adieu to my friends at the parsonage, followed him down to a small creek
overshaded by tall trees, where, concealed among the reeds and bushes,
lay the canoe. It could not, I should think, have measured more than
three yards in length, by eighteen inches in breadth at the middle,
whence it tapered at either end to a thin edge. It was made of birch
bark scarcely a quarter of an inch thick; and its weight may be imagined
when I say that the Indian lifted it from the ground with one hand and
placed it in the water, at the same time handing me a small light
paddle. I stepped in with great care, and the frail bark trembled with
my weight as I seated myself, and pushed out into the lake. The sun had
just set, and