280 DAYS OUT OF DOORS. 



harvests. To our ancestors the snows of winter were more 

 pleasant than the flowers of spring, as they brought the 

 cessation of the horrors of war. But it often happened 

 that the mild day of November afforded the red men 

 another opportunity of visiting the settlements with those 

 desolating blows, which burst like the lightning from the 

 cloud, leaving the record of their effects in the blaze that 

 followed the stroke. The activity of the red men during 

 these periods gave, as is supposed, the name of ' Indian 

 summer ' to those bright days, when autumn bestows its 

 last parting favors." 



From Hubbard's " Memorials of a Half Century " I clip 

 the following, as descriptive of the true Indian summer 

 and its peculiarities : " Early New England writers," he 

 states, " speak of this serene portion of autumn as pecul- 

 iar to America, hence the name they gave it. But we 

 look in vain for any recognition of it in pages not more 

 than half a century old. It seems to have departed from 

 the land of the Puritans with the vanished forests, and 

 doubtless these had much to do with its former preva- 

 lence. The French of Canada, called the season ' St. Mar- 

 tin's summer.' . . . 



"Yet the Indian summer is no myth. It often 

 breaks upon us from the very midst of storm, frost, 

 and snow, true to the tradition that there must first 

 be a c squaw winter ' before we can have an ' Indian ' sum- 

 mer. . , . 



" Pleasant as our autumns usually are, . . . not more 

 than one in three or four presents any period of successive 

 days which take on the character of well-defined Indian 

 summer. Intervals between such years may vary from one 

 to ten. ... Of the fifty years from 1835 to 1885, ten are 

 marked on my calendar as having each a full week of well- 

 defined Indian summer, viz., 1837, '39, '44, '48, '53, '59, 

 '08, '73, '75, and '84 ; two as having eleven to fifteen days, 



