At last rid of our importunate acquaintances, we turned
in for a sleep, which we resolved should be broken at the first moment,
dark or light, when we might cross the lake. Before daylight the
Betsy's resonant call awoke us, and in the earliest gray we paddled out
upon a heavy but not foaming sea, and after two and a half hours of
monotonous splashing in the trough of the waves landed for breakfast on
the eastern shore, whence we crossed a lovely bay and passed out once
more upon the river.
A mile on our way we came to the prettiest of the many Indian
burying-grounds which we saw now and then. Formerly, the Indians
deposited their dead upon rude scaffolds well up in the air. Now they
seek high ground and place the bodies of the departed in shallow
graves, over which they build little wooden houses a foot or two high
with gabled roofs, and mark each with a white flag raised upon a pole a
few feet above the sleeper's head. In this neighborhood we inquired of
a stalwart brave concerning our proximity to a portage by means of
which a short walk over to a small lake near the head of Ball Club Lake
and a pull of six miles down the latter would bring us out again into
the river, and save a tedious voyage of twenty-five to thirty miles
through a broad savanna.
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