Many were the exclamations of childish wonder that broke from the other females, as they compared the snowy arm of the stranger with their own dusky skins; it was plain that they had no intention of harming her, and by degrees distrust and dread of her singular companions began in some measure to subside.
The squaw motioned her to take a seat on a mat beside her, and gave her a handful of parched rice and some deer's flesh to eat; but Catharine's heart was too heavy; she was suffering from thirst, and on pronouncing the Indian word for water, the young girl snatched up a piece of birch-bark from the floor of the tent, and gathering the corners together, ran to the lake, and soon returned with water in this most primitive drinking vessel, which she held to the lips of her guest, and she seemed amused by the long deep draught with which Catharine slaked her thirst; and something like a gleam of hope came over her mind as she marked the look of kindly feeling with which she caught the young Indian girl regarding her, and she strove to overcome the choking sensation that would from time to time rise to her throat, as she fluctuated between hope and fear.

The position of the Indian camp was so placed that it was quite hidden from the shore, and neither could Catharine see the mouth of the ravine, nor the steep side of the mount that her brothers were accustomed to ascend and descend in their visits to the lake shore, nor had she any means of making a signal to them even if she had seen them on the beach.
The long, anxious, watchful night passed, and soon after sunrise, while the morning mists still hung over the lake, the canoes of the Indians were launched, and long before noon they were in the mouth of the river.
Catharine's heart sunk within her as the fast receding shores of the lake showed each minute fainter in the distance.

At midday they halted at a fine bend in the river, where a small open place and a creek flowing down through the woods afforded them cool water; and here they found several tents put up and a larger party awaiting their return.

The river was here a fine, broad, deep and tranquil stream; trees of many kinds fringed the edge; beyond was the unbroken forest, whose depths had never been pierced by the step of man--so thick and luxuriant was the vegetation that even the Indian could hardly have penetrated through its dark swampy glades: far as the eye could reach, that impenetrable interminable wall of verdure stretched away into the far off distance.
On that spot where our Indian camp then stood, are now pleasant open meadows, with an avenue of fine pines and balsams; showing on the eminence above, a large substantial dwelling-house surrounded by a luxuriant orchard and garden, the property of a naval officer, _[FN: Lt.

Rubidge, whose interesting account of his early settlement may be read in a letter inserted in Captain Basil Hall's Letters from Canada.]_ who with the courage and perseverance that mark brave men of his class, first ventured to break the bush and locate himself and his infant family in the lonely wilderness, then far from any beaten road or the haunts of his fellow-men.
But at the period of which I write, the axe of the adventurous settler had not levelled one trunk of that vast forest, neither had the fire scathed it; no voices of happy joyous children had rung through those shades, nor sound of rural labour nor bleating flock awakened its echoes.
All the remainder of that sad day, Catharine sat on the grass under a shady tree, her eyes mournfully fixed on the slow flowing waters, and wondering at her own hard fate in being thus torn from her home and its dear inmates.