The Ontario Readers Part 28

GEORGE COOPER

RADISSON AND THE INDIANS

The tribe being a.s.sembled and having spread out their customary gifts, consisting of beaver tails, smoked moose tongues and pemmican, one of the leading braves arose and said:

"Men who pretend to give us life, do you wish us to die! You know what beaver is worth and the trouble we have to take it. You call yourselves our brothers, and yet will not give us what those give who make no such profession. Accept our gifts, and let us barter, or we will visit you no more. We have but to travel a hundred leagues and we will encounter the English, whose offers we have heard."

On the conclusion of this harangue, silence reigned for some moments.

All eyes were turned on the two white traders. Feeling that now or never was the time to exhibit firmness, Radisson, without rising to his feet, addressed the whole a.s.semblage in haughty accents.

"Whom dost thou wish I should answer? I have heard a dog bark; when a man shall speak, he will see I know how to defend my conduct and my terms. We love our brothers and we deserve their love in return. For have we not saved them all from the treachery of the English?"

Uttering these words fearlessly, he leaped to his feet and drew a long hunting-knife from his belt. Seizing by the scalp-lock the chief of the tribe, who had already adopted him as his son, he asked: "Who art thou?"

To which the chief responded, as was customary: "Thy father."

"Then," cried Radisson, "if that is so, and thou art my father, speak for me. Thou art the master of my goods; but as for that dog who has spoken, what is he doing in this company? Let him go to his brothers, the English, at the head of the Bay. Or he need not travel so far. He may, if he chooses, see them starving and helpless on yonder island; answering to my words of command.

"I know how to speak to my Indian father," continued Radisson, "of the perils of the woods, of the abandonment of his squaws and children, of the risks of hunger and the peril of death by foes. All these you avoid by trading with us here. But although I am mightily angry, I will take pity on this wretch and let him still live. Go," addressing the brave with his weapon outstretched, "take this as my gift to you, and depart.

When you meet your brothers, the English, tell them my name, and add that we are soon coming to treat them and their factory yonder as we have treated this one."

The speaker knew enough of the Indian character, especially in affairs of trade, to be aware that a point once yielded them is never recovered.

And it is but just to say that the terms he then made of three axes for a beaver were thereafter adopted, and that his firmness saved the Company many a cargo of these implements. His harangue produced an immediate impression upon all save the humiliated brave, who declared that, if the a.s.siniboines came hither to barter, he would lie in ambush and kill them.

The French trader's reply to this was, to the Indian mind, a terrible one.

"I will myself travel into thy country," said he, "and eat sagamite in thy grandmother's skull."

While the brave and his small circle of friends were livid with fear and anger, Radisson ordered three fathoms of tobacco to be distributed; observing, contemptuously, to the hostile minority that, as for them, they might go and smoke women's tobacco in the country of the lynxes.

The barter began and, when at nightfall the Indians departed, not a skin was left amongst them.

BECKLES WILLSON: "The Great Company."

THE BROOK

I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally, And sparkle out among the fern, To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down, Or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorps, a little town, And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways, In little sharps and trebles, I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a l.u.s.ty trout, And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake Upon me, as I travel With many a silvery waterbreak Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and gra.s.sy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeam dance Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars In brambly wildernesses; I linger by my shingly bars; I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow To join the br.i.m.m.i.n.g river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

TENNYSON

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Many a man lives a burden to the earth, but a good book is the precious life blood of a master-spirit.

MILTON

"DO SEEK THEIR MEAT FROM G.o.d"

There was a solitary cabin in the thick of the woods a mile or more from the nearest neighbour, a substantial frame house in the midst of a large and well-tilled clearing. The owner of the cabin, a shiftless fellow who spent his days for the most part at the corner tavern three miles distant, had suddenly grown disgusted with a land wherein one must work to live, and had betaken himself with his seven-year-old boy to seek some more indolent clime.

The five-year-old son of the prosperous owner of the frame house and the older boy had been playmates. The little boy, unaware of his comrade's departure, had stolen away, late in the afternoon, along the lonely stretch of wood road, and had reached the cabin only to find it empty.

As the dusk gathered, he grew afraid to start for home and crept trembling into the cabin, whose door would not stay shut. Desperate with fear and loneliness, he lifted up his voice piteously. In the terrifying silence, he listened hard to hear if anyone or anything were coming.

Then again his shrill childish wailings arose, startling the unexpectant night, and piercing the forest depths, even to the ears of two great panthers which had set forth to seek their meat from G.o.d.

The lonely cabin stood some distance, perhaps a quarter of a mile, back from the highway connecting the settlements. Along this main road a man was plodding wearily. All day he had been walking, and now as he neared home his steps began to quicken with antic.i.p.ation of rest. Over his shoulder projected a double-barrelled fowling-piece, from which was slung a bundle of such necessities as he had purchased in town that morning. It was the prosperous settler, the master of the frame house, who had chosen to make the tedious journey on foot.

He pa.s.sed the mouth of the wood road leading to the cabin and had gone perhaps a furlong beyond, when his ears were startled by the sound of a child crying in the woods. He stopped, lowered his burden to the road, and stood straining ears and eyes in the direction of the sound. It was just at this time that the two panthers also stopped, and lifted their heads to listen. Their ears were keener than those of the man, and the sound had reached them at a greater distance.

Presently the settler realized whence the cries were coming. He called to mind the cabin; but he did not know the cabin's owner had departed.

He cherished a hearty contempt for the drunken squatter; and on the drunken squatter's child he looked with small favour, especially as a playmate for his own boy. Nevertheless he hesitated before resuming his journey.

"Poor little fellow!" he muttered, half in wrath. "I reckon his precious father's drunk down at 'the Corners,' and him crying for loneliness!"

Then he re-shouldered his burden and strode on doggedly.