130 In Touch with Nature. 



to do with it, are we slowly being reduced to 

 domestic animals and insects ? 



What an undiscovered country is the bed of a 

 river! A mile or more away, where the water 

 was much deeper, I again endeavored to peer into 

 the depths, and saw more than one suggestive 

 object. Not strange forms of life merely, albeit 

 there were many, and these may well suffice to 

 bid us pause, for however commonplace any 

 creature may be when dead and out of place, it is 

 an object of ceaseless interest when in its native 

 haunts. Let one watch mackerel in the open sea, 

 and then draw comparison with the hacked and 

 salted carcass in the corner grocery. There were 

 dimly to be discerned traces of old-time navigation, 

 and how I longed to catch a glimpse of an Indian 

 canoe ! Doubtless a vain wish, but not an absurd 

 one. Writes Peter Kalm of the Indians of this 

 very river valley: "Whenever they intended to 

 hollow out a thick tree for a canoe, they laid dry 

 branches all along the stem of the tree as far as it 

 must be hollowed out. They then put fire to 

 those dry branches, and as soon as they were 

 burnt they were replaced by others. . . . The tree 



