ver, with which my husband was to pay the annuities due his red
children, by treaty-stipulation, were stowed next. Our mess-basket was
in a convenient vicinity, and we had purchased a couple of large square
covered baskets of the Waubanakees, or New York Indians, to hold our
various necessary articles of outward apparel and bedding, and at the
same time to answer as very convenient little work or dinner-tables.

As a true daughter of New England, it is to be taken for granted I had
not forgotten to supply myself with knitting-work and embroidery. Books
and pencils were a matter of course.

The greater part of our furniture, together with the various articles
for housekeeping with which we had supplied ourselves in New York and
Detroit, were to follow in another boat, under the charge of people
whose business it professed to be to take cargoes safely up the rapids
and on to Fort Winnebago. This was an enterprise requiring some three
weeks of time and a great amount of labor, so that the owners of the
goods transported might think themselves happy to receive them at last,
however wet, broken, and dilapidated their condition might be. It was
for this reason that we took our choicest possessions with us, even at
the risk of being a little crowded.

Until now I had never seen a gentleman attired in a colored shirt, a
spotless white collar and bosom being one of those "notions" that
"Boston," and consequently New England "folks," entertained of the
becoming in a gentleman's toilette. Mrs. Cass had laughingly forewarned
me that not only calico shirts but patch-work pillow-cases were an
indispensable part of a travelling equipment; and, thanks to the taste
and skill of some tidy little Frenchwoman, I found our divan-pillows all
accommodated in the brightest and most variegated garb.

The Judge and my husband were gay with the deepest of blue and pink.
Each was prepared, besides, with a bright red cap (a _bonnet rouge_, or
_tuque_, as the voyageurs call it), which, out of respect for the lady,
was to be donned only when a hearty dinner, a dull book, or the want of
exercise made an afternoon nap indispensable.

The Judge was an admirable travelling companion. He had lived many years
in the country, had been with General Cass on his expedition to the
head-waters of the Mississippi, and had a vast fund of anecdote
regarding early times, customs, and inhabitants.

Some instances of the mode of administering justice in those day