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Once or twice, too, by the water's edge we saw dwarfish creatures-one could scarcely say if they were men or monkeys who burrow for homes among the seaweed, drink the pools of brackish water, and eat what they can catch. These are the fish-eaters, the Ichthyophagi, of whom old Herodotus talks surely the lowest of all the human race.

Say, we want a few, didn't we, Smoke, I don't mind tellin' you in confidence that before we started I was the gosh-dangdest scaredest man this side of the Rocky-Mountains. Now I'm a bear-eater. Come on an' we'll run that other boat through." Midway back, on foot, they encountered their employers, who had watched the passage from above. "There comes the fish-eaters," said Shorty.

They were a robust lot, of tall and well-shaped figures, and were called in the Chinook tongue "salt chuck," which means fish-eaters, or eaters of food from the salt water.

It is cold work, however, sitting and watching for the signal to come from the hole, and one cannot help admiring the men's energy and keenness. It is only natural that, living in a country where fish is so plentiful, the people themselves should be great fish-eaters, and the daily fish-markets at Bergen and other places on the coast are most interesting sights.

In one group sat the chiefs of the Ottawas, the most distant of the tribes, dwellers on the far shores of Lake Huron, sometimes fish-eaters, and fugitives at an earlier day from the valley of the Ottawa River in Canada, whence they took their name.

An instinct in her own breast told her the old man was right, but it was hard to resign herself to an extended campaign. Spring was in the air, and her need to escape from the Fish-Eaters great. "All right," she agreed sullenly at last. "How you goin' pick out best man of the five?" asked Musq'oosis slyly. "I tak' the strongest man," she answered promptly.

"Yet Split-Nose said no; that he did not want to go back, but ahead; that they grew strong only as they added their strength together; and that, if the Fish-Eaters would add their strength to the Meat-Eaters, there would be no more fighting and no more watchers and no more guards, and that, with all men working, there would be so much food that each man would have to work not more than two hours a day.

Probably living much on fish might produce this disgust; for Diodorus Siculus attributes the same aversion in a people of Ethiopia to the same cause; he calls them the fish-eaters, and asserts that they cannot be brought to eat a single meal with the Heautofagi by any persuasion, threat, or violence whatever, not even though they should kill their children before their faces.

"You must have been fools not to know better," was Deer-Runner's comment, Yellow-Head grunting approval. "So we were, but we became bigger fools, as you shall see. Still, we did learn better, and this was the way of it. We Fish-Eaters had not learned to add our strength until our strength was the strength of all of us.

He was so old all his relations were dead. He remained with the Fish-Eaters because he loved the lake, and could not be happy away from it. For their part they were glad to have him stay; he brought credit to the tribe. As one marked by God and gifted with superior wisdom, the people were inclined to venerate Musq'oosis even to the point of according him supernatural attributes.