Their lips relaxed until the pipe of one fell upon the floor.

Their eyes seemed starting from their heads, and raising their outspread hands, as if to wave us from them, they slowly ejaculated, "_Manitou!"_ (a spirit.) As we raised our masks, and, smiling, came forward to shake hands with them, they sprang to their feet and fairly uttered a cry of delight at the sight of our familiar faces.
"Bon-jour, bon-jour, Maman!" was their salutation, and they instantly plunged out of doors to relate to their companions what had happened.
Our afternoon's ride was over a prairie stretching away to the northeast No living creature was to be seen upon its broad expanse, but flying and circling over our heads were innumerable flocks of curlews, "Screaming their wild notes to the listening waste." Their peculiar, shrill cry of "crack, crack, crack--rackety, rackety, rackety," repeated from the throats of dozens, as they sometimes stooped quite close to our ears, became at length almost unbearable.

It seemed as if they had lost their senses in the excitement of so unusual and splendid a cortege in their hitherto desolate domain.
The accelerated pace of our horses, as we approached a beautiful, wooded knoll, warned us that this was to be our place of repose for the night.

These animals seem to know by instinct a favorable encamping-ground, and this was one of the most lovely imaginable.
The trees, which near the lake had, owing to the coldness and tardiness of the season, presented the pale-yellow appearance of unfledged goslings, were here bursting into full leaf.

The ground around was carpeted with flowers--we could not bear to have them crushed by the felling of a tree and the pitching of our tent among them.