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"Leading the way from the drawing-rooms, or divans, he takes us through bedrooms and dressing-rooms furnished in Spartan simplicity, with the little iron bedsteads covered with bear-skins, and supplied with writing- tables and lamps, beside which repose the Bible, the Shakspeare, the Euclid, and the Breviary, which go with Captain and Mrs. Burton on all their wanderings.
And Chee-Chee spoke of many things his grandmother had told him tales of long, long, long ago, before Noah and the Flood of the days when men dressed in bear-skins and lived in holes in the rock and ate their mutton raw, because they did not know what cooking was having never seen a fire.
Not a thing escaped them, not a piece of fur of any kind; fox-skins, bird-skins, bear-skins, pots, lamps, and everything else, were picked up and carried off just as if we had no right to them at all; and although there were, as I have said, five sledges, yet these were all quite heavily laden. "As we passed down by our sledge, the savages set up another laugh at it.
But this also is no bad story. But Ellis could not know others, and he left alone yet others that he might have known the exquisite Sir Launfal of Thomas Chester at the beginning of the fifteenth century, where an unworthy presentment of Guinevere is compensated by the gracious image of Launfal's fairy love; the lively adventures of William of Palerne, who had a werewolf for his friend and an emperor's daughter for his love, eloping with her in white bear-skins, the unusual meat of which was being cooked in her father's kitchen; Sir Orfeo Orpheus and Eurydice, with a happy ending; Emarè, one of the tales of innocent but persecuted heroines of which Chaucer's Constance is the best known; Florence of Rome; the rather famous Squire of Low Degree; Sir Amadas, not a very good handling of a fine motive, charity to a corpse; many others.
"Some sleigh-robes, Lady Mary, are made of bear-skins, lined with red or blue flannel; some are of wolf-skins, lined with bright scarlet cloth; and some of racoon; the commonest are buffalo-skins: I have seen some of deer-skins, but these last are not so good, as the hair comes off, and they are not so warm as the skins of the furred or woolly-coated animals."
The situation was suddenly changed by a shout from the direction of the beach. Led by the chief, the natives all now hurried out of the barabbara. The young boy remained. In a few moments he crawled out and presently dragged in after him the wet bear-skins, making signs that they would be spoiled if left in the rain.
At night-fall there were but six Iroquois left on his trail, and these were about worn out. Now in the gathering darkness, noting his enemies falter, Piskaret sprang aside to a hollow tree and hid himself again. The tired Iroquois straggled near, and when they lost the trail they willingly quit, in order to roll in their bear-skins and sleep until the light of morning.
With a furious manner and "a hellish voyce " they began an oration of their loves, covered him with their painted bear-skins, hung a chain of white beads about his neck, and hailed his creation as their governor and protector, promising aid and victuals if he would stay and help them fight the Massawomeks. They moumed greatly at Smith's departure. Of Powhatan they knew nothing but the name.
He lay on the bear-skins; he directed his wife to make another bed and sleep on it. They lay apart. The bride thought this was strange; she told her mother of it. The mother said, 'Never mind. By and by it will be all right. The wife thought it was all wrong. When seven nights had passed the bridegroom disappeared. He was not seen in his village for twenty-five or thirty years.
To slay him was a feat worthy of Beowulf's self; and the greatest wonder, perhaps, among all the wealth of Crowland, was the twelve white bear-skins which lay before the altars, the gift of the great Canute. How Gilbert had obtained his white bear, and why he kept him there in durance vile, was a mystery over which men shook their heads.
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