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off and planting with maize and pompions the common fields to be tilled
by the women, "who fret at the very shadow of a crow," writes an old
trader. All these cabins were now still and silent in the sun. The
dome-shaped town-house, of a different style of architecture, plastered
within and without with red clay, placed high on the artificial mound,
and reached by an ascent of stairs which were cut in regular gradations
in the earth, lacked its strange religious ceremonies; its secret
colloguing council of chiefs with the two princes of the town; its
visitors of distinction, ambassadors from other towns or Indian nations;
its wreaths of tobacco sent forth from diplomatically smoked pipes; its
strategic "talks;" its exchange of symbolic belts and strings of wampum
and of swans' wings--white, or painted red and black, as peace hovered
or war impended--and other paraphernalia of the savage government. Even
the trading-house showed a closed door, and the English trader, his pipe
in his mouth, smoked with no latent significance, but merely to garner
its nicotian solace, sat with a group of the elder braves and watched
the barbaric sport with an interest as keen as if he had been born and
bred an Indian instead of native to the far-away dales of Devonshire.
Nay, he bet on the chances of the game with as reckless a nerve as a
Cherokee,--always the perfect presentment of the gambler,--despite the
thrift which characterized his transactions at the trading-house, where
he was wont to drive a close bargain, and look with the discerning
scrupulousness of an expert into the values of the dressing of a
deerskin offered in barter. But the one pursuit was pleasure, and the
other business. The deerskins which he was wearing were of phenomenal
softness and beauty of finish, for the spare, dapper man was arrayed
like the Indians, in fringed buckskin shirt and leggings; but he was
experiencing a vague sentiment of contempt for his attire. He had been
recently wearing a garb of good camlet-cloth and hose and a bravely
cocked hat, for he was just returned from a journey to Charlestown, five
hundred miles distant, where he had made a considerable stay, and his
muscles and attitude were still adjusted to the pride of preferment and
the consciousness of being unwontedly smart. Indeed, his pack-train,
laden with powder and firearms, beads and cloth, cutlery and paints, for
his traffic with the Indians under the license which he held from the
Br