r the shores of a large lake, in canoes made of bark. While
one woman paddled the canoe, the other gathered the wild rice, which
flourished there in great abundance. By bending it over the canoe with
one stick, and then striking it with another, the grains of rice fell
in profusion into the canoe. In this way they proceeded; till they
obtained full cargoes of wild rice for food.

_Brian._ I wish we had wild rice growing in our pond.

_Hunter._ What I have to say of Lover's Leap is a little melancholy.
On the east side of Lake Pepin, on the Mississippi, stands a bold
rock, lifting up its aspiring head some six or seven hundred feet
above the surface of the lake. Some years since, as the story goes, an
Indian chief wished his daughter to take a husband that she did not
like. The daughter declined, but the father insisted; and the poor,
distracted girl, to get rid of her difficulty, threw herself, in the
presence of her tribe, from the top of the rock, and was dashed to
pieces.

_Basil._ Poor girl, indeed! Her father was a very cruel man.

_Hunter._ The chief was cruel, and his daughter rash; but we must not
be too severe in judging those who have no better standard of right
and wrong than the customs of their uncivilized tribe. It was on the
Upper Missouri river, towards the mouth of the Teton river, that I
came all at once on a salt meadow. You would have thought that it had
been snowing for an hour or two, for the salt lay an inch or two thick
on the ground.

_Austin._ What could have brought it there?

_Hunter._ The same Almighty hand that spread out the wild prairie,
spread the salt upon its surface. There are salt springs in many
places, where the salt water overflows the prairie. The hot sun
evaporates the water, and the salt is left behind.

_Brian._ Well, that is very curious.

_Hunter._ The buffaloes and other animals come by thousands to lick
the salt, so that what with the green prairie around, the white salt,
and the black buffaloes, the contrast in colour is very striking.
Though Florida is, to a great extent, a sterile wilderness, yet, for
that very reason, some of its beautiful spots appear the more
beautiful. There are swamps enough, and alligators enough, to make the
traveller in those weary wilds cheerless and disconsolate; but when,
after plodding, day after day, through morasses and interminable pine
woods, listening to nothing but the cry of cranes and the howling of
wolves, he comes suddenl