IN FEATHERS AND FUR. 295 
said, they have only to gather them out of the sea, to have all the 
quart bottles they want. These vegetable bottles are the hollow 
stems of a water plant, which grows very large, and near the root 
swells out into a natural bottle. The Indians cut off the stem, fill 
them with oil, and cork them up. 
There is another article of food the Indians get from the sea, 
only the squaws have to get them, for an Indian thinks it beneath 
his dignity to do so. I never heard of any of them refusing to eat 
them, however. 
How do you think it would feel, when you were lying quietly 
in bed at home, to have a big stick pushed under you, and all of a 
sudden be jerked up through the top of the house, out into the 
light, and then be seized by a big red giant, and thrown into a 
horrid basket, with other stolen children ? 
That's just what happens to the poor little Clams, who live in 
the sandbank on the sea-shore. When the water is over the sand, 
Mr. Clam buries himself two feet deep. By-and-by the water goes 
back, and leaves the beach bare. Now, if the Clam would only 
keep quiet, he could never be found ; but he has a funny fashion of 
spirting up little jets of sea water, several inches high. 
The squaw takes a long stick and goes after him. When he 
spirts up the water, she pushes the stick under, and just pries him 
out, then grabs him, and throws him into her basket. 
I don't suppose he's much frightened at first, for he has a good 
strong shell, like an oyster shell, you know, and he just shuts it up, 
certain that no one can open it. No knife can get in, and he's 
almost as safe as if he were locked up in a big castle. 
But that don't worry Madame Squaw. She knows a very cun- 
ning trick to make the gentleman open his shell. She merely lays 
him carefully on a pile of red-hot stones, and sits down, with a sharp 
stick in her hand, to w r ait till he chooses to open. 
She don't wait long, for the heat soon goes through his shell, 
and Mr. Clam finds it intolerably close. 
"Whew!" he says to himself — at least I suppose he does — 
"this is getting a little too hot! I don't hear any noise, and I 
guess the red giant has gone away. I must have a sniff of fresh 
air." 
So he opens his shell a little, when wily Madam Squaw just 
pushes her stick into the door, and he can't shut it again. Then 
she takes a knife and gets him out — dead, of course. 
