1639.] RECEPTION. 141 



In the morning they breakfasted on a morsel of 

 corn bread, and, resuming their journey, fell in 

 with a small party of Indians, whom they followed 

 all day without food. At eight in the evening thev 

 reached the first Tobacco town, a miserable cluster 

 of bark cabins, hidden among forests and half 

 buried in snow-drifts, where the savage children, 

 seeing the two black apparitions, screamed that 

 Famine and the Pest were coming. Their evil 

 fame had gone before them. They were unwel- 

 come guests ; nevertheless, shivering and famished 

 as they were, in the cold and darkness, they boldly 

 pushed then- way into one of these dens of bar- 

 barism. It was precisely like a Huron house. 

 Five or six fires blazed on the earthen floor, and 

 around them were huddled twice that number of 

 families, sitting, crouching, standing, or flat on 

 the ground ; old and young, women and men, 

 children and dogs, mingled pell-mell. The scene 

 would have been a strange one by daylight : it was 

 doubly strange by the flicker and glare of the 

 lodge-flres. ScoAvling brows, sidelong looks of dis- 

 trust and fear, the screams of scared children, the 

 scolding of squaws, the growling of wolfish dogs, — 

 this was the greeting of the strangers. The chief 

 man of the household treated them at first with the 

 decencies of Indian hospitality ; but when he saw 

 them kneeling in the litter and ashes at then devo- 

 tions, his suppressed fears found vent, and he began 

 a loud harangue, addressed half to them and half 

 to the Indians. " Now, what are these okles doing? 

 They are making charms to kill us, and destroy all 



