106 THE SCHOODICS. 



Such it is usually necessary to determine by lot. Their time 

 is mainly divided between loafing and doing nothing, and 

 consequently they are quite harmless. Some, however, have 

 been known to murder the Queen's English while under the 

 influence of whiskey. No capital penalty attaches to this 

 crime, because the Government desires to preserve the red 

 man from total extinction. Of those most temperate and 

 trustworthy, Sabattis is chief. Sabattis is a good Indian 

 "got good canoe good paddle all good. Sabattis not 

 drink whiskey no for Injun not good no whiskey? 



If we can engage Sabattis, we are all right. 



But stay. Can you keep yourself in a birch canoe ? It 

 requires some tact not to tumble out ; and the canoes of the 

 Passamaquoddies are by no means stiff, like those of many 

 tribes. The equipoise which an expert maintains uncon- 

 sciously is acquired only by long experience, and unless the 

 novice is confident he can balance himself on a tight-rope 

 the first time trying, he had better go in the steamboat. 

 Never a white man learned to " paddle his own canoe" who 

 did not attain the acquisition through baptism by immer- 

 sion. 



There is an exhilaration in canoe-voyaging which pertains 

 to no other kind of locomotion enjoyed by man. In the 

 calm of a summer's day, with sky and clouds reflected in 

 watery vacuity, whose depth seems illimitable as the sky 

 itself, one floats dreamily in space on bird-wings. He dwells 

 among enchanted isles of air, with duplicated and inverted 

 shores. Trees of living green spring up from nothing below, 

 and grow tops downward. Gorgeous hues of summer color- 

 ing are multiplied and intensified. Everywhere the waves 

 are peopled with shadowy things that wear the semblance of 

 reality. You can strike with your paddle the image of the 

 crow that is crossing overhead, and shiver it into countless 

 fractions of crows. A clumsy fly drones past your nose and 

 drops heavily on the water, and lo ! from the concussion spring 

 two flies ; and as one gathers up his wings for a flight and 



