132 In Touch with Nature. 



a century ago near the head of tide-water, which 

 would be worth their weight in gold were they in 

 existence now ; but they were valueless then, when 

 the Indians were looked upon simply as " hea- 

 then" and scarcely human ; although a book con- 

 cerning them had appeared declaring them to be 

 the lost tribes. Was it not enough to juggle them 

 out of their lands without permitting a crank to 

 lie about them afterwards ? This slowly-decaying 

 piece of hewn timber was suffering no sea-change. 

 Neither coral nor sea-weed beautified it, and the 

 few lazy mussels that ploughed the sand near by 

 were as dull and forbidding in hue ; but there was, 

 better than all this, a wealth of suggestiveness. 



Taking my oars in hand, I hurried now to the 

 opposite shore and landed upon a narrow but 

 clean, bright, pebbly beach. Again the Indian 

 loomed up, but without the Dutch traders. The 

 rounded bits of many different rocks were full of 

 beauty in themselves, and here they were mingled 

 with fragments of bog iron ore or limonite, which 

 recalled the contents of more than one Indian 

 grave I had opened. Here were scattered little 

 cups and rings and many an oddly-fashioned form 



