Doc took comfort from Sponge-belly’s lowering face. “Leave him be!” he said to me, when I suggested fanning his indignation. “Leave him lay! He’s stuffed with sulks, like a barrel stuffed with gunpowder. Pretty soon he’ll bust!” Softly, and to himself, he added, “Hi-yi! Old Shaman Means’ll touch him off! Bong!”

One by one the landmarks fell behind us—the Grand Traverse, the Beaver Islands, Michillimackinac, Grand Manitoulin Island, French River, Lake Nipissing, the Mattawa River, and at last the Ottawa River—the one Frenchmen call La Grande Rivière.

It was when we emerged from this beautiful river into the broad St. Lawrence that we had an unexpected glimpse of the war. At the embarking place on the westernmost point of Montreal Island there was an army of British troops and Indian warriors. A whole flotilla of bateaux and canoes were ranged along the shore; and on the bank above was a staggering assemblage of redcoats, voyageurs, teamsters, axe-men, and great store of baggage wagons, hogsheads, ammunition boxes and supplies.

The scouts and advance guards of this force were already on the move, to the westward, up the St. Lawrence, which was mystifying to us, whose goal was in the opposite direction.

It was hard to remember, when British scouts shouted at us and waved their paddles, that we were not Americans, in perpetual danger of being shot out of hand—that we were, to their sight, friendly Indians bound for the war.

Among those scouts, in addition to French Canadians and Indians, were big men in strange green uniforms—different in appearance from the English regulars, who are apt to be scrawny, as if fed on carrots in their youth.

On the point of the island the main body of troops was embarking beneath the eye of a British officer. He was a general, with a face as red as the coats of the infantrymen who were getting themselves into the canoes. It may be that the heat of the day had upset him, for he was tongue-lashing his red-coated soldiers in terms that would sound offensive when applied to a dog, let alone to a human.

There were vast numbers of Indians in addition to the regulars; but by comparison with our own red men from the west, they were a scurvy-looking crew. To one who had never before seen Indians they may have seemed good enough, since they were painted as gaudily as our own companions; but they were small, and truly dirty. There was something disreputable about them, as though they had been drunk for a week, and were of no account at any time.