We had nothing to eat but bread and water. We dare not make fire as we
might be detected by the savages and then be subjected to a stricter
_surveillance_, and maybe punished for our wanderings. Thus
speaking of fire makes me think of the signals that the bands had, the
beacons that flared from the heights at stated times and for certain
purposes. Even before the outbreak, I remember of Indians coming to my
husband and telling him that they were going on a hunt, and if such
and such a thing took place, they would at a certain time and in a
certain direction, make a fire. We often watched for the fires and at
the stated time we would perceive the thin column of smoke ascend into
the sky. For twenty and thirty miles around these fires can be seen.
They are made in a very peculiar manner. The Indian digs a hole about
a foot square and in that start the flame. He piles branches or fagots
up in a cone fashion, like a bee-hive, and leaving a small hole in the
top for the smoke to issue forth, he makes a draught space below on
the four sides. If the wind is not strong, that tiny column of blue
smoke will ascend to a height often of fifty or sixty feet. During the
war times they make use of these fires as signals from band to band,
and each fire has a conventional meaning. Like the _phares_ that
flashed the alarm from hill-top to hill-top or the tocsin that sang
from belfry to belfry in the Basse Bretagne, in the days of the rising
of the Vendee, so those beacons would communicate as swiftly the
tidings that one band or tribe had to convey to another.
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