578 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[December, 
Christmas Around the World. 
It was what Uncle Jack called a “real okl- 
fashioned ” Christmas, and he ought certainly to 
have known, for he had seen enough of them. 
“The wind,” said Uncle Jack, “howls in that 
chimney like a pack of wolves—like those we heard 
a story being behind them. — “ Away up in Califor¬ 
nia,” replied Ned, with the careless dignity of a 
traveller and a man of the world.—“ Was it in a 
gold mine?” asked Tommy, with whom California 
was but another name for a world of that precious 
metal in solid lumps.—“It was near a gold mine,” 
answered Ned; “Eh, Uncle Jack?”—“Near a 
there at certain seasons when they want to fish. A 
good many of them live up in the trees ashore the 
rest of the year. You see, all of the low land 
along the Amazon, for a hundred miles from where 
it empties into the sea, is covered with forests 
which are almost always submerged by the tide. 
So the Indians build rough houses in the branches 
• " • - ' — ‘ ~ ' ' ' >- ^ ' 
CHRISTMAS IN THE SIERRAS. 
Drawn and Engraved for the American Agriculturist. 
last Christmas eve—eh, Ned, my boy, do you rec¬ 
ollect those wolves, we heard up in the Sierras ? ’ 
The boys all stared at that lucky brother who had 
just come back from a three-years’ trip around the 
world with his sailor uncle. Ned became aware of 
his importance all at once, and straightened himself 
up on his stool in front of the big farmhouse fire¬ 
place, where a mountain of flame was glowing above 
the huge backlog: — “ Yes, indeed,” said he, “I 
shan’t forget that Christmas eve in a hurry, I’ll be 
bound.”— “Where was it you heard the wolves, 
Ned?” asked Tommy, who was never backward in 
asking questions when there was any likelihood of 
hole in the ground that I never got auy gold out 
of,” grunted the Captain, picking up a live coal in 
his horny fingers and dropping it in his pipe bowl. 
“If there’s any in it, I’m in bigger luck than I 
think—and so are you, for you’ll get some Christ¬ 
mas presents from me before you die.”—Tommy 
was beginning to ask, “but, Uncle Jack, haven’t 
you got money enough to buy us some Christmas 
presents now?”—when mamma, looking over her 
sewing from the chimney corner, said: “Indeed, 
Ned, you have had three Christmases away from 
home. Suppose you tell us of them. Where did 
you spend your first Christmas since we saw you 
last?”—“On the Amazon river,” responded Ned. 
“ Don’t you remember, Uncle Jack, the mate call¬ 
ing us at daylight, and our seeing the big sandbar, 
with the red and white cranes on it, and the gulls 
diving for fish ? And the little house built on posts 
out in the water, and the Indians fishing from it, 
and that boy asleep with his line tied to his wrist 
who woke so suddenly and was so scared to see a 
big ship that he fell into the water? 1 don’t re¬ 
member ever seeing such a comical sight,” said 
Ned laughing, “ except when Tommy was a baby 
and fell headlong iuto the maple sugar kettle. Do 
you remember that interesting occasion, Tommy?” 
“ Was he drowned ?” asked Tommy, ignoring 
the personality. — “'Was he !” said Ned. “ You 
can’t drown an Indian in that country. Why, he 
had shinned up the post to the house again in a 
minute, and pulled a big fish up on his line, along 
with him. Aud he yelled and waved the fish at us, 
like a handkerchief, until we were tired of looking 
at him.”—“ It must have been nice to eat when he 
got through with it,” observed Dick, who had been 
listening, without interrupting his work on the cane 
head he was carving to present to his father on the 
morrow. “But I say, Ned, what do the Indians 
live on the water like that for?”—“ They only live 
and live in them. The river Indians have lived so 
for hundreds of years. There are plenty of them, 
1 guess, that never felt dry land under their feet, 
and would feel as uncomfortable there as you 
would if you had to live all your life upon a tree.” 
“But what do they eat?” asked Tommy, witli 
A CHRISTMAS FISHERMAN. 
whom this always was a question of the first im¬ 
portance.—“Fish is about all.”—“And what do 
they wear?”—“Their skins, or an old shirt that 
they trade fish for to some passing vessel. They’ll 
