

comstock] ////«: OLD PI Si TREKS STORY 25 



been my friend that day and carried the flame off away from me, I 

 should have been crippled tor life. When I was quite tall, a beetle 

 killed my leader as you call my topmost tip. At once two of the 

 branches of my upper whorl tried to take the place of my dead 

 leader ; if one only had succeeded I should have been a straight and 

 single shafted tree; but both those branches were so ambitious 

 that neither would give up; so I was obliged to grow two tops 

 instead of one. Finally, after many years I got my head above the 

 trees that lose their leaves in winter and then I was all right. 



I wish I could tell you the things I saw here in those days when 

 all was forest except that ledge over there. The red men often 

 passed here carrying their canoes for fishing excursions on the lake. 

 And sometimes they had races there that were as exciting as those 

 the crews row to-day but the trees were the only folk that crowded 

 the shores to see them. The deer and the moose passed near me 

 on their way to their feeding grounds up the marshy inlet valley, 

 where the beaver builded. When there was a strong branch where 

 you see that lower broken stub on my side, it was a favorite resting 

 place for a great panther; there she would lie hidden until a deer 

 passed below ; then would she hurl herself upon it with such force 

 that the creature never knew what killed it. Then she would drag 

 her quarry to that little ravine and call her young ones from their 

 den and they would feast together. The den was under the 

 upturned roots of a fallen oak over there where that building now 

 stands and it was kept very clean with no bones near it to attract 

 the wolves that used to hunt there in packs at night with their noses 

 to the ground like your dogs. 



The red men often held their feasts on this hill. Here they made 

 offerings to He-no, the thunderer, and to Ga-oh the spirit of the 

 winds. Many times when I see the games played by the boys now 

 I think of the games played here before a white man ever set foot 

 on this hill. One of these games was snow-snake that was played 

 over beyond the ledge ; the snake was a hickory sapling as long as a 

 tall man and polished with wax. The Indian youth took one end of 

 it with his thumb and fingers and running a certain distance, threw 

 it down a track made by drawing a small log straight over the 

 snow. There was one boy here then who could shoot a snake 

 twelve hundred feet, which is farther than any boy here now can 

 throw a ball. But he was old and died before the white man came. 

 When the white man came, all changed. He was a foe to the 



