There
is another on that island, but she probably has a calf, perhaps two,
and it would be a wicked waste of the food that God provides for us,
to destroy her. But we must get this gentleman into the boat, and it
will bring us down so deep in the water, we must keep near the shore,
as it may be necessary occasionally to wade."
Peter, without ceremony, began to make preparations for such an
emergency. He had been accustomed all his life, until he left the
Nor-west Company's employment, to the kilt, and he neither felt nor
looked at home in the trousers. Like most of his countrymen, he
thought there was more beauty in a hairy leg, and in a manly
shammy-leather looking skin, than in any covering. While his bald
knee, the ugliest, weakest, most complicated and important joint in
the frame, he no doubt regarded with as much veneration as the pious
do the shaven crown of a monk. He therefore very complacently and
coolly began to disencumber himself of this detestable article of the
tailor's skill. I thought it best therefore to push off in time, to
spare his daughters this spectacle, merely telling the doctor we would
wait for him where we had embarked.
We proceeded very leisurely, only once in a while dipping the paddle
gently into the water, so as to keep up the motion of the canoe. The
girls amused themselves by imitating the call and answer of the loon,
the blue-jay, the kingfisher, and the owl.
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