The morning broke bright and balmy. A pleasant breeze swept lazily
over the lake, lifting the thin mist that hung like a veil of gauze
above the water. We left our tents standing, and crossed over to the
shanty of our friends of the previous evening to breakfast. We found
them living like princes. Their two boatmen had built them a log
shanty; open in front, and covered with bark so as to be impervious to
the rain, while within was a luxurious bed of boughs. Around the
campfire were benches of hewn slabs, and a table of the same material.
A few rods from the door a beautiful spring came bubbling up into a
little basin of pure white sand, the water of which was limpid and
cold almost as ice-water. They had been here for a week, hunting and
fishing. They had employed their leisure in jerking the venison they
had taken, of which they had some four or five bushels, and which they
intended to take home with them, to serve, together with the skins of
the deer they had slain, as trophies of their success.
They received us cordially, and we sat down to a breakfast, which, for
variety, at least, rivalled the elaborate preparations of the Astor or
the St. Nicholas; albeit, the cookery, as an abstract fact, might have
been of the simplest. We had venison-steak, pork, ham, jerked venison
stew, fresh trout, broiled partridge, cold roast duck, a fricassee of
wood rabbits, and broiled pigeon upon our table, coming in courses,
or piled up helter-skelter on great platters of birch bark, some on
tin plates, and now and then a choice bit on a chip! We had coffee,
and tea, and the purest of spring water, by way of beverage, and truth
compels me to admit, that under the advice of the Doctor, a drop or
two of Old Cognac may have been added by way of relish, or to temper
the effect of a hearty meal upon the delicate stomachs of some of the
guests.
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