n away. And when Oello caught one of the
little babies up, and tossed it in her arms, and fondled it, and made it
laugh, the little girl's mother laughed too. And when they had all once
laughed together, peace was made among them all, and Oello saw where the
Indian women had been lying, and what their poor little shelters were,
and she led the way there, and sat down on a log that had fallen there,
and called the children round her, and began teaching them a funny game
with a bit of crimson cord. Nothing pleases savage people or tame people
more than attention to their children, and in less time than I have
been telling this they were all good friends. The Indian women produced
supper. Pretty poor supper it was. Some fresh-water clams from the lake,
some snails which Oello really shuddered at, but some bananas which were
very nice, and some ulloco, a root Oello had never seen before, and
which she thought sickish. But she acted on her motto. "I will do the
best I can," she had said all along; so she ate and drank, as if she had
always been used to raw snails and to ulloco, and made the wild women
laugh by trying to imitate the names of the strange food. In a few
minutes after supper the sun set. There is no twilight in that country.
When the sun goes down,

"Like battle target red,--
He rushes to his burning bed,
Dyes the whole wave with ruddy light,
Then sinks at once, and all is night."

The savage people showed the strangers a poor little booth to sleep in,
and went away to their own lairs, with many prostrations, for they
really thought them "children of the sun."

Oello and her husband laughed very heartily when they knew they were
alone. Oello made him promise to go in the morning early for potatoes,
and oca, and mashua, which are two other tubers like potatoes which grow
there. "And we will show them," said she, "how to cook them." For they
had seen by the evening feast, that the poor savage people had no
knowledge of the use of fire. So, early in the morning, he went up a
little way on the lake shore, and returned with strings of all these
roots, and with another string of fish he had caught in a brook above.
And when the savage people waked and came to Oello's hut, they found her
and her husband just starting their fire,--a feat these people had never
seen before.

He had cut with his copper knife a little groove in some soft palm-wood,
and he had fitted in it a round piece of iron-wood,