FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52  
53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   >>   >|  
lled only by a glass or two of Lung Balm. Her condition must have been critical, for one night after several necessary doses of Balm her head seemed affected. She became abusive to the lady of the house and at the end of the month a less interesting help was in her place. There were many lessons good and bad that Yan might have drawn from this; but the only one that he took in was that the Black-cherry bark is a wonderful remedy. The family doctor said that it really was so, and Yan treasured up this as a new and precious fragment of woodcraft. Having once identified the tree, he was surprised to see that it was rather common, and was delighted to find it flourishing in his own Glenyan. This made him set down on paper all the trees he knew, and he was surprised to find how few they were and how uncertain he was about them. Maple--hard and soft. Beach. Elm--swamp and slippery. Ironwood. Birch--white and black. Ash--white and black. Pine. Cedar. Balsam. Hemlock and Cherry. He had heard that the Indians knew the name and properties of every tree and plant in the woods, and that was what he wished to be able to say of himself. One day by the bank of the river he noticed a pile of empty shells of the fresh-water Mussel, or Clam. The shells were common enough, but why all together and marked in the same way? Around the pile on the mud were curious tracks and marks. There were so many that it was hard to find a perfect one, but when he did, remembering the Coon track, he drew a picture of it. It was too small to be the mark of his old acquaintance. He did not find any one to tell him what it was, but one day he saw a round, brown animal hunched up on the bank eating a clam. It dived into the water at his approach, but it reappeared swimming farther on. Then, when it dived again, Yan saw by its long thin tail that it was a Muskrat, like the stuffed one he had seen in the taxidermist's window. He soon learned that the more he studied those tracks the more different kinds he found. Many were rather mysterious, so he could only draw them and put them aside, hoping some day for light. One of the strangest and most puzzling turned out to be the trail of a Snapper, and another proved to be merely the track of a Common Crow that came to the water's edge to drink. The curios that he gathered and stored in his shanty increased in number and in interest. The place became more and more part of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52  
53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

common

 

surprised

 

tracks

 

shells

 

picture

 
Common
 

remembering

 

acquaintance

 

gathered

 

number


increased
 

marked

 

Mussel

 

interest

 

perfect

 

curios

 

stored

 
curious
 

shanty

 

Around


animal

 

hoping

 

taxidermist

 

window

 

Muskrat

 

stuffed

 
learned
 
studied
 

approach

 
eating

mysterious

 

Snapper

 

hunched

 
reappeared
 

turned

 

strangest

 

swimming

 

puzzling

 
farther
 

proved


cherry

 

interesting

 

lessons

 

treasured

 

precious

 

wonderful

 
remedy
 
family
 

doctor

 

critical