ny ended, the chief arose, and gave the
Englishman his hand, in which he was followed by all the rest.

At the Sault Ste Marie, on the river connecting Lake Superior and
Huron, Henry spent part of the spring of 1763-4, and engaged with a
few French Canadians and Indians in making maple sugar, the season for
which--April--was now at hand.

A temporary house for eight persons was built in a convenient part of
the maple woods, distant about three miles from the fort. The men
then gathered the bark of white birch trees, and made out of it
vessels to hold the sap which was to flow from the incisions they cut
in the bark of the maple trees. Into these cuts they introduced wooden
spouts or ducts, and under them were placed the birch-bark vessels.
When these were filled, the sweet liquid was poured into larger
buckets, and the buckets were emptied into bags of elkskin containing
perhaps a hundred gallons. Boilers (probably of metal, introduced by
the French) were next set up in the camp over fires kept burning day
and night, and the maple sap thus boiled became, by concentration,
maple sugar.

The women attended to all the business of sugar manufacture, while the
men cut wood and went out hunting and fishing to secure food for the
community; though, as a matter of fact, sugar and syrup were their
main sustenance during all this absence from home. "I have known
Indians", wrote Henry, "to live for a time wholly on maple sugar and
syrup and become fat." The sap of the maple had certain medicinal
qualities which were exceedingly good for persons who had previously
been eating little else than meat and fish, so that the three weeks of
sugar-boiling in Canada was, no doubt, a splendid assistance to the
health of the natives. On this particular occasion described by Henry,
the party returned, after three weeks' absence, to the Sault Ste Marie
with 1600 lb. of maple sugar, and 36 gallons of syrup.[4]

[Footnote 4: There are at least two species of maple in Canada
yielding sugar from their sap; but the best is _Acer saccharinum_. The
maple leaf is the national emblem of Canada.]

Henry returned in the summer of 1763 to Fort Michili-makinak. The
place was then held by a British garrison under Major Etherington.
Shortly after Henry's arrival, an Ojibwe chief named Wawatam came
often to his lodgings, and, taking a great fancy to the Englishman,
asked leave to become his blood brother. He was about forty-five
years of age, and of an e