Even Catharine lent a willing hand to assist the females in bringing up the stores, and sundry baskets containing fruits and other small wares.

She then kindly attended to the Indian children, certain dark-skinned babes, who, bound upon their wooden cradles, were either set up against the trunks of the trees, or swung to some lowly depending branch, there to remain helpless and uncomplaining spectators of the scene.
Catharine thought these Indian babes were almost as much to be pitied as herself, only that they were unconscious of their imprisoned state, having from birth been used to no better treatment, and moreover they were sure to be rewarded by the tender caresses of living mothers when the season of refreshment and repose arrived; but she alas! was friendless and alone, an orphan girl, reft of father, mother, kindred and friends.

One Father, one Friend, poor Catharine, thou hadst, even He--the Father of the fatherless.
That night when the women and children were sleeping, Catharine stole out of the wigwam, and climbed the precipitous bank beneath the shelter of which the lodges had been erected.

She found herself upon a grassy plain, studded with majestic oaks and pines, so beautifully grouped that they might have been planted by the hand of taste upon that velvet turf.
It was a delightful contrast to those dense dark forests through which for so many many miles the waters of the Otonabee had flowed on monotonously; here it was all wild and free, dashing along like a restive steed rejoicing in its liberty, uncurbed and tameless.
Yes, here it was beautiful! Catharine gazed with joy upon the rushing river, and felt her own heart expand as she marked its rapid course, as it bounded murmuring and fretting over its rocky bed.

"Happy, glorious waters! you are not subject to the power of any living creature, no canoe can ascend those surging waves; I would that I too, like thee, were free to pursue my onward way--how soon would I flee away and be at rest!" Such thoughts perhaps might have passed through the mind of the lonely captive girl, as she sat at the foot of one giant oak, and looked abroad over those moonlit waters, till, oppressed by the overwhelming sense of the utter loneliness of the scene, the timid girl with faltering step hurried down once more to the wigwams, silently crept to the mat where her bed was spread, and soon forgot all her woes and wanderings in deep tranquil sleep.
Catharine wondered that the Indians in erecting their lodges always seemed to prefer the low, level, and often swampy grounds by the lakes and rivers in preference to the higher and more healthy elevations.