LAKE SUPERIOR. 99 



taneous m-m-m, a sort of grunt that became more 

 vigorous as Frank became excited, and grew louder 

 as his arguments grew stronger ; till before he was 

 through, the listener would have supposed that the 

 entire party was suffering in the agony of what 

 children know as the stomach-ache. The grunt was 

 not in the least like the conventional humph, was 

 uttered without opening the mouth, which would 

 have been an excessive and unnecessary labor, and 

 "was capable of great expression. It began sympa- 

 thetic, grew appreciative and confirmatory, and at 

 last became wildly, enthusiastic; evidently taking its 

 origin from the Greek chorus, which is of a similar 

 appropriateness ; it was the strangest accompaniment 

 to a public speech we ever heard. 



Feeling the importance of the case, we endea- 

 vored to keep our countenances ; but what with 

 Frank's bursts of eloquence, his graceful and im- 

 pressive gestures with the gridiron, the vehement 

 grunt in chorus at every pause, our strange 

 position congregated in the wild woods round a fire 

 with a parcel of unkempt savages, begging to swap 

 off, as our Yankee brethren would say, a quantity of 

 biscuit for a passage in a canoe, we could not con- 

 tain ourselves, but rolled over in convulsions of 

 laughter. 



At first the Indians did not know what was the 

 matter, then they joined with us, and when we 

 attempted to imitate their grunt they shouted louder 

 than we had done. Frank felt that aspersions were 

 cast upon his eloquence, and seemed to have his 



