* A TRAMP WITH REDSKINS.” 249 
Equator it is as well to get through as much as 
possible of the work before the sun acquires its mid- 
day force. A hasty meal an hour before dawn, which 
is, there, between five and six in the morning, anda start 
in the morning twilight enables one to get over a long 
distance in the course of the day. But on the first morning 
it is always impossible to make as early a startasthis. It 
is very rarely that you can get a redman to say beforehand, 
even the night before the journey begins, whether he will 
come with you or not or whether he will allow his followers 
to come with you. One wakes up in tbe morning with 
complete uncertainty therefore as to how many com- 
panions one is to have on the march. On this particular 
occasion it happened that there was no great difficulty in 
getting enough people to start, though there was quite 
the usual difficulty in apportioning each person’s load. 
Men, women and children are all willing to carry, each in 
proportion to his or her strength, a fair, even a heavy 
burden ; but a sort of etiquette seems to proscribe what 
each is to carry. For instance, the men have the greatest 
objection to carrying cooking utensils ; and that a woman 
should carry a gun, or even the bows and arrows of her 
own husband, would be almost indecent. 
But though it was comparatively easy to make the 
start that morning, I can tell of a typical instance which 
I experienced on another occasion of the difficulty of 
these starts. From the settlements where I then was 
every man woman and child was carrying willingly for 
me, with the exceptions of three very old crones and one 
fine young fellow who had the night before been fore- 
most in games but who now suddenly declared that he 
was ill. Probably | had offended him ...... insome 
