66

summer ones, for katy-did and grasshopper and
cricket were all gone to the Land of Light, if there
is one for insects, or were swathed in their shrouds,
or hidden away, or had returned to the dust from
which they came ; but there were birds, and pen-
sive small voices
would come out of
the dark, a startled
squirrel would rustle
the dead leaves, and
rabbits are known
to walk abroad be-
tween midnight and
cock-crowing; the
river rumbled like
distant thunder
away off somewhere
where echo pro-
longed the sound;
brooks under the
crust tinkled and
gurgled, and whiles,
as the Scotch say,
- the ice would crack.
Voices of the night, lonesome and mystic—the
air was full of them to one who had ears to hear.

We imagined it all, like Annie Keary, who begun

-her stories with “ Let us suppose,” and how, before
it was dark we would gather dry sticks and cones
and the kind of fallen pine-boughs that will snap
when you step on them—and then the people who
owned the camp would let us tend the fire, and it
would roar and send out sparks —and no doubt
smoke some, right into our eyes, and drop white
ashes on us, and burn our faces and holes in our
garments. Perhaps, too, they would let us have a
kettle or an old dinner-pot of our own — unques-
tionably they could hunt one out from some of
those dark corners overhead where there were
boards laid across for a storage place; and we
would have some partly boiled syrup put in, and
it would come to candy— flavored a little bit with
smoke and the burning on, and mixed a little with
hemlock leaflets and the crumbling relics of
scorched pine needles,

We should probably find out all about sugar-
making, too, about maple-trees, and wood-craft;
and we would make our host tell us stories, Indian
stories just scary enough to thrill us and make us
afraid to look behind us if a stick crackled outside,

 

THE SAP-BUCKETS.

A MAPLE SUGAR CAMP.

and about the early settlers, and then those neigh-

borhood stories which the shrewd country people.
can tell so well, real character delineations full of

genuine human nature about some odd geniuses

such as Mrs. Stowe delights to “write up.”

That struck us as a charming idea of sugar camp
life. We ought to have been born back three or
four generations ago, when the sugar-makers did
things in a way more primitive, as the Indians
taught them; for it was from the Indians that our
ancestors learned to tap the maple-trees in spring
and boil the sap down. There were not such
limitations to the knowledge of the red men as
many persons think. It is doubtful if there was
much concerning the qualities of trees and plants
that they did not know. To be sure they had .
plenty of time, the forest all around them, and
nothing else to do except fight.

Very soon after the Pilgrims landed, some of
Massassoit’s people entertained the white strangers
with “sweet bread,” made of Indian corn, perhaps
first parched, and then ground — whether the sweet-
ness was that of corn meal alone, or from some other
source, we are left to conjecture. Lately we have
been told by a popular author that the Indians
used to cook “little doughnuts of meal by drop-
ping them into maple syrup,” which is a hint for
modern cooks to work out to more esthetic results,
The aborigines had no iron utensils, so they used.
earthen pots of a. rude shape, which they set over
the fire, and boiled the sap out in the open air.
For collecting it they had wooden troughs, fash-
ioned from a log by being burnt out or gouged -
out with a hard shell. Other wooden vessels were
hollowed in the same way; and they had, besides
these, pails, or buckets, made from great sheets
of birch bark.

It is to be hoped that the Indians who were.
friendly, taught the newcomers the secret of the
maple-trees very soon; for in that olden time
when broths and bean-porridge and messes con-
coted from pumpkins made so much of the fare,
when there was no coffee used, and tea only as the
rarest luxury, what a treat it must have. been to
have had maple syrup! A writer who knows,
says that “the sap of all the New England maples
and birches, and lindens, and hickories, and wal-
nuts, is watery and sweet and contains crystal-
lized sugar.” It seems also that under modern
improvements there can be sugar made from