ARISPE. 
271 
to move. The people of the place, for want of other 
employment, hung about our camp from morning to 
night, though the cooking department seemed to pos- 
sess the greatest attraction for them. Men, women, 
and children crowded around the presiding function- 
ary, for the double purpose of cultivating a knowledge 
of the culinary art and of picking up such scraps as he 
thought proper to bestow upon them. Their own 
cooking is all done in earthen vessels ; and the abun- 
dance of iron utensils with which we were furnished 
seemed to impress them with the idea of our great 
wealth. The doctor, too, was beset by these people. 
Their complaints were chiefly diseases of the eyes, and 
such others as result from improper food and unclean 
habits. The doctor accompanied his medicine with a 
lecture on that virtue which ranks next to godliness, 
and the necessity of employing their time in industrial 
pursuits, and of obtaining by their own energies the 
comforts they so much need. He prescribed and gave 
a small quantity of rice to a sick woman, and soon 
found that nearly all her sisterhood in the place stood 
in need of similar aliment. 
I found many of these people quite desirous to 
emigrate to the Copper Mines ; and they earnestly 
begged permission to accompany me back. Some 
fourteen years before, when the mines were worked, 
a considerable trade between here and that place 
was carried on, which, if we maintained a post there, 
would probably be resumed. 
It is difficult to make the people of this place 
believe that we are not a party of traders ; and every 
hour in the day we have calls to sell needles, thread. 
