United States or Marshall Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The clean-up was finished, and day by day they awaited the coming of Appleton and Sheridan, and of Father Lapre, of the Rice Lake Mission. The men of the crew set about to make the event one long to be remembered in the Northland. Flowers were unobtainable, but a frame in the form of a giant horseshoe was constructed and covered over with pine-cones.
Even half a Roman coat of mail and a bit of mosaic from a Roman bath were to be seen here. Amid these antiquities, stood beautiful Venetian glasses, pine-cones and ostrich-eggs. Such another tap-room could scarcely be found in Holland, and even the liquor, which a neatly-dressed maid poured for the guests from oddly-shaped tankards into exquisitely-wrought goblets, was exceptionally fine.
"Its mouth," replied Sumichrast, smiling, "is well adapted to its food. This bird which we have here met with quite by chance, as it usually frequents mountain-tops feeds on roots, buds, and pine-cones. Owing to its two mandibles being so strongly made and so curiously arranged it can cut through, as if with a pair of scissors, branches which a bird with a pointed beak could never penetrate."
They were forced to boil and eat the moss growing on the trees, and they cut down the pine-trees for the sake of the small nut to be found in the pine-cones. Here they were met by an old friend, Neeshnepahkeeook and the Shoshonee, who had acted as interpreter for them. The journal says:
With infinite faith in the tendencies of mineral and vegetable nature, in human nature he shows no practical trust, and must even be severe upon the babies in the Maine log-huts for playing with wooden dolls instead of pine-cones.
And he heard the melancholy notes of birds, the twitter of grouse, the sough of the wind, the light dropping of pine-cones, the near and distant bark of squirrels, the deep gobble of a turkey close at hand and the challenge from a rival far away, the cracking of twigs in the thickets, the murmur of running water, the scream of an eagle and the shrill cry of a hawk, and always the soft, dull, steady pads of the hoofs of the horses.
Marietta had a fire of logs and pine-cones blazing in no time. She courtesied low to the Duchessa, lower still to the priest in fact, Peter was n't sure that she did n't genuflect before him, while he made a rapid movement with his hand over her head: the Sign of the Cross, perhaps.
After a time the pleasant chill creeps down from the eternal snows. Some one throws another handful of pine-cones on the fire. Sleepily you prepare for bed. The pine-cones flare up, throwing their light in your eyes. You turn over and wrap the soft woolen blanket close about your chin. You wink drowsily and at once you are asleep.
Driving his way through close-growing bush comes the unkempt figure of a man. A familiar figure, but so changed as to be hardly recognizable. His clothes are rent and scored by the horny branches. His feet crush noisily over the pine-cones in moccasins that have rotted from his feet with the journey over melting snow and sodden vegetation.
He found her enjoying the cheery blaze of the pine-cones the little girls had picked up for her, and Bab and Betty sat in the small chairs rocking luxuriously as they took turns to throw on the pretty fuel.
Word Of The Day