nd, and the pleasant prospect
they command of the country below them, especially where the Rice Lake,
with its various islands and picturesque shores, is visible. The ground
itself is pleasingly broken into hill and valley, sometimes gently
sloping, at other times abrupt and almost precipitous.

An American farmer, who formed one of our party at breakfast the
following morning, told me that these plains were formerly famous
hunting grounds of the Indians, who, to prevent the growth of the
timbers, burned them year after year; this, in process of time,
destroyed the young trees, so as to prevent them again from accumulating
to the extent they formerly did. Sufficient only was left to form
coverts; for the deer resort hither in great herds for the sake of a
peculiar tall sort of grass with which these plains abound, called deer-
grass, on which they become exceedingly fat at certain seasons of the
year.

Evening closed in before we reached the tavern on the shores of the Rice
Lake, where we were to pass the night; so that I lost something of the
beautiful scenery which this fine expanse of water presents as you
descend the plains towards its shores. The glimpses I caught of it were
by the faint but frequent flashes of lightning that illumined the
horizon to the north, which just revealed enough to make me regret I
could see no more that night. The Rice Lake is prettily diversified with
small wooded islets: the north bank rises gently from the water's edge.
Within sight of Sully, the tavern from which the steam-boat starts that
goes up the Otanabee, you see several well cultivated settlements; and
beyond the Indian village the missionaries have a school for the
education and instruction of the Indian children. Many of them can both
read and write fluently, and are greatly improved in their moral and
religious conduct. They are well and comfortably clothed, and have
houses to live in. But they are still too much attached to their
wandering habits to become good and industrious settlers. During certain
seasons they leave the village, and encamp themselves in the woods along
the borders of those lakes and rivers that present the most advantageous
hunting and fishing grounds.

The Rice Lake and Mud Lake Indians belong, I am told, to the Chippewas;
but the traits of cunning and warlike ferocity that formerly marked this
singular people seem to have disappeared beneath the milder influence of
Christianity.

Certain it is th