160 ON THE EDGE OF THE WILDERNESS 
the whole grain was far tenderer and easier to eat. 
But one had to use care. In the first place, 
farmers didn’t like to have their corn pulled up, 
and had an annoying trick of sneaking up with a 
gun and shooting you. In the second place, they 
had an almost equally annoying trick of cover- 
ing the corn with a vile smelling and tasting black 
substance (called tar, or creosote), which quite 
spoiled the food, sometimes, in an entire field. 
One couldn’t tell at all from the sprout whether 
the corn was tarred or not. One had to go to all 
the trouble of pulling it up first. 
When Jim and his friends went corn hunting, 
and found a promising field, one of the number 
was always stationed in a tree where he could 
command a clear view of the approaches, to give 
warning of any danger. Then the others went 
to work, ready instantly to rise and fly away if 
the watcher uttered his warning caw. (If you 
listen to crows carefully enough, you yourself can 
learn their language sufficiently, at least, to dif- 
ferentiate between a caw of warning, say, a caw 
which means attack, and a playful caw. There 
are men who know many more crow words than 
