34 EVERYDAY ADVENTURES 



sweet as honey and without a trace of pucker. On 

 their way back, they passed through a thicket of 

 tangled bushes, whose branches were all matted to- 

 gether in bunches which looked like birds' nests. 

 The twigs were laden down with round, purple berries 

 about the size of a wild cherry, and the Captain told 

 the Band that these were hackberries, otherwise 

 known as sugar-berries. They picked handfuls of 

 them, and found that the berry had a sweet spicy 

 pulp over a fragile stone that could be crushed like 

 the stones of a raisin, while the fruit when eaten 

 resembled a raisin in taste. 



Hurrying back to the camp-fire tree, the Captain 

 dug a round circle a couple of feet in diameter in the 

 snow, and spread down a layer of dry leaves. Over 

 these he built a little tepee of tiny, dry, black-oak 

 twigs. Underneath this he placed a fragment of 

 birch-bark which he had peeled off one of the aspen 

 birches which grew on the fringe of the swamp. 

 This burned like paper, and in a minute the little 

 ball of dry twigs was crackling away with a steady 

 flame. Over this he piled dry sassafras and hickory 

 boughs, and in a few moments the Band was seated 

 around a column of flame which roared up fully four 

 feet high. With their backs against the great oak tree, 

 they cracked and cracked and cracked black wal- 

 nuts and crunched sugar-berries and nibbled nanny- 

 plums and tasted frost-grapes — saving the single 

 sandwich until next to the last; while for desert they 

 had handfuls and handfuls of honey-sweet, wrinkled 

 persimmons. 



