The Shell People often fished from boats, and the boats were
excellent. Each consisted of four or five short logs of the most buoyant
wood, bound firmly together with tough withes, but the contrivance was
more than a simple raft, because, at the bow, it had been hewed to a
point, and the logs had been so chosen that each curved upward there. It
had been learned that the waves sometimes encountered could so more easily
be cleft or overridden. None of these boats could sink, and the man of the
time was quite at home in the water. It was fun for the young men whose
tale is told here to go with the Shell People and assist in spearing fish
or drawing them from the river's depths upon rude hooks, and the Shell
People did not object, but were rather proud of the attendance of
representatives of the hillside aristocracy.
The morning was one to make men far older than these two most confident
and full of life. The season was late, though the river's waters were not
yet cold. The mast had already begun to fall and the nuts lay thickly
among the leaves. Every morning, and more regularly than it comes now,
there was a spread of glistening hoar frost upon the lowlands and the
little open lands in the forest and upon every spot not tree-protected. At
such times there appeared to the eyes of the cave people the splendor of
nature such as we now can hardly comprehend.
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