00-KOO-HOO'S EL DORADO 73 



warmest place in the lodge, the place of honour, farthest from 

 and directly opposite the doorway. When the dogs are al- 

 lowed in the tepee, they know their place to be the first space 

 on the left, between the entrance and the children. 



While the two leather lodges of the Indians stood close to- 

 gether with stages near at hand upon which to store food and 

 implements out of reach of the dogs and wild animals, my 

 tepee, the canvas one, stood by itself a little farther up the 

 creek. Taking particular pains in making my bed, and settling 

 everything for service and comfort, I turned in that night 

 in a happy mood and fell asleep contemplating the season 

 of adventure before me and the great charm of living in such 

 simphcity. "In the savage state every family owns a shelter 

 as good as the best, and sufficient for its coarser and simpler 

 wants," says Thoreau, "but I think that I speak within 

 bounds when I say that, though birds of the air have their nests, 

 and the foxes their holes, and the savages their wigwams, in 

 modern civilized society not more than one half the families 

 own a shelter. In the large towns and cities, where civilization 

 especially prevails, the number of those who own a shelter is 

 a very small fraction of the whole. The rest pay an annual 

 tax for this outside garment of all, become indispensable sum- 

 mer and winter, which would buy a village of Indian wigwams 

 but now helps to keep them poor as long as they live. . . . 

 But how happens it that he who is said to enjoy these things is 

 so commonly a poor civihzed man, while the savage, who has 

 them not, is rich as a savage.^" 



Next morning, while roaming about the point, I discovered 

 two well-worn game trails that, converging together, led directly 

 to the extreme outer end of our point. The tracks were the wild 

 animals' highways through that part of the woods, and were 

 used by them when they desired to make a short cut across that 

 end of the lake by way of a neighbouring island. Worn fairly 

 smooth, and from three to five inches in depth, by from eight 



