My First Summer 



eler coming suddenly upon a group of them 

 for the first time will not be likely to forget 

 them. They are built of all kinds of sticks, 

 old rotten pieces picked up anywhere, and 

 green prickly twigs bitten from the nearest 

 bushes, the whole mixed with miscellaneous 

 odds and ends of everything movable, such 

 as bits of cloddy earth, stones, bones, deer- 

 horn, etc., piled up in a conical mass as 

 if it were got ready for burning. Some of 

 these curious cabins are six feet high and as 

 wide at the base, and a dozen or more of 

 them are occasionally grouped together, less 

 perhaps for the sake of society than for advan- 

 tages of food and shelter. Coming through 

 the dense shaggy thickets of some lonely 

 hillside, the solitary explorer happening into 

 one of these strange villages is startled at the 

 sight, and may fancy himself in an Indian 

 settlement, and begin to wonder what kind 

 of reception he is likely to get. But no sav- 

 age face will he see, perhaps not a single 

 inhabitant, or at most two or three seated 



[96] 



