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The next day Mrs. Frazer seemed to be much better; and she showed Lady Mary an Indian basket, made of birch-bark, very richly wrought with coloured porcupine-quills, and which had two lids. Lady Mary admired the splendid colours, and strange patterns on the basket. "It is for you, my dear," said her nurse, "open it, and see what is in it."
Frazer, you had better lie down and rest yourself, for you must be tired after your long, long journey." The next day Mrs. Frazer seemed to be much better; and she showed Lady Mary an Indian basket made of birch-bark, very richly wrought with coloured porcupine-quills, and which had two lids. Lady Mary admired the splendid colours, and strange patterns on the basket.
All along the little street beyond, for a score of yards at least, there is a bare patch of pavement on which the giddy blasts have not allowed a single flake of snow to settle. Besides these Indians, there is a girl of the same tribe on the market-place, come to dispose of her little store of bark work embroidered with porcupine-quills, and gaily ornamented moccasins.
Around her neck were innumerable strings of white and purple wampum an Indian ornament manufactured from the inner surface of the muscle-shell. Her hair was clubbed behind and loaded with beads of various colors. Leggings of scarlet cloth, and moccasins of deer-skin embroidered with porcupine-quills, completed her costume.
Bright-colored rags, feathers, beads, porcupine-quills, and even scraps of tin, were the ornaments upon which the squaws relied to make the toilets of their tribe "stylish" and beautiful; and Kitty tiny little woman that she was soon grew to agree with them perfectly in matters of taste.
Her dress consists of a buckskin wrap without girdle, embroidered at the lower end with multi-coloured porcupine-quills. Bracelets of white shells, a necklace of feldspar crystals and turquoises, and strings of yellow cotton threads around her ankles complete the costume.
Those that were grown up had bristling moustaches like porcupine-quills on their flat lips, and the young ones had tusks in different degrees of development except the baby, whose head resembled an ill-shaped football. They did not seem in the least afraid of the approaching oomiak. Perhaps they thought it a very dirty piece of ice covered with rather grotesque seals.
Sometimes it was venison sometimes ducks or pigeons whortleberries, wild plums, or cranberries, according to the season neat pretty mats for the floor or the table wooden bowls or ladles, fancy work of deer-skin or porcupine-quills. These they would bring in and throw at my feet.
Besides their furs, various in kind and often of great value beaver, otter, marten, mink, silver-gray and red fox, wolf, bear, and wild-cat, musk-rat, and smoked deer-skins the Indians brought for trade maple-sugar in abundance, considerable quantities of both Indian corn and petit-blé, beans and the folles avoines, or wild rice; while the squaws added to their quota of merchandise a contribution in the form of moccasins, hunting-pouches, mococks, or little boxes of birch-bark embroidered with porcupine-quills and filled with maple-sugar, mats of a neat and durable fabric, and toy-models of Indian cradles, snow-shoes, canoes, etc., etc.
In compliment to the new acquaintances she had formed, she shortened her skirts, mounted a pair of scarlet leggings embroidered with porcupine-quills, and took her leave of military life, having deposited with the gentleman who took charge of her sixty dollars, for safe keeping, which she remarked "she had saved up, out of her wages at a dollar a week, through the winter."
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