20 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS. 



Great Salt Lake, in the State of Utah. To the south of the 

 St. Lawrence also is Lake Champlain, 105 miles long, though 

 extremely narrow --being only 10 miles in its widest part, 

 narrowing in some places to half a mile. Near it is the 

 beautiful Lake St. George, with several other small lakes ; 

 and lastly, in Florida, there is a chain of small lakes, termi- 

 nating in Lake Okechodee— a circular sheet of water about 

 thirty miles in diameter. 



We must now proceed more particularly to examine the 

 regions of which we have obtained the preceding cursory 

 view, but, before we do so, we must glance at their human 

 inhabitants. 



ABORIGINAL INHABITANTS— THE BED MEN OF THE WILDS. 



While the white men from Europe occupy the whole 

 eastern coast, pressing rapidly and steadily westward, the 

 Redskin aborigines maintain a precarious existence through- 

 out the centre of the continent, from north to south, and are 

 still found here and there on the western shores. On the 

 northern ice-bound coast, the skin-clothed Esquimaux wander 

 in small bands from Behring Strait to Baffin Bay, but never 

 venture far inland, being kept in check by their hereditary 

 enemies, the Athabascas, the most northern of the red-skinned 

 nations.' The Esquimaux, inhabiting the Arctic regions, may 

 more properly be described in the volume devoted to that 

 part of the globe. 



INDIAN WIGWAMS. 



Here and there, in openings in the primeval forest, either 

 natural or artificial, on the banks of streams and lakes, several 

 small conical structures may be seen, composed of long stakes, 

 stuck in the oround in circular form, and fastened at the top. 



