CHAPTER II. 



An unwelcome Visitor and a warm. Keception St. Mary's Mission A 

 Genial old Soul Chicken white Soup The Big Blue We seek 

 Advice again Very contradictory A System of Rejections The last 

 Settlement. 



OUR first adventure befell us but a few clays after 

 starting ; and almost immediately upon entering the 

 country of the Pottowattomies. 



We had arrived at our camp-ground unusually late ; 

 the sun was already down, the moon not risen, and it was 

 quite a dark night. Supper was being prepared, and the 

 blaze, from what our chef de cuisine coarsely but forcibly 

 designated as " that portable h " made the surround- 

 ing darkness appear almost solid, and brought into ruddy 

 relief Jack's flannel shirted, buckskin-breeched figure, 

 as he stooped over the portable aforesaid to bake what 

 he called a " pome " that is to say, he had achieved a 

 lump of dough, grease, and sceleratus, half as thick as a 

 brick, twice as large, and about as digestible, which aid to 

 suicide he was placing, by means of a shovel extemporised 

 out of the top of a candle-box, into a large bed of red-hot 

 wood-coals when, to our amazement, suddenly, and with 



