[Canadian Crusoes by Catherine Parr Traill]@TWC D-Link bookCanadian Crusoes CHAPTER IX 6/16
Everything has prospered well with us since she came to us.
Perhaps it is because we try to make a Christian of her, and so God blesses all our endeavours." "We are told," said Hector, "that there is joy with the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth; doubtless, it is a joyful thing when the heathen that knew not the name of God are taught to glorify his holy name." Indiana, while exploring, had captured a porcupine; she declared that she should have plenty of quills for edging baskets and mocassins; beside, she said, the meat was white and good to eat.
Hector looked with a suspicious eye upon the little animal, doubting the propriety of eating its flesh, though he had learned to eat musk rats, and consider them good meat, baked in Louis's Indian oven, or roasted on a forked stick, before the fire.
The Indian porcupine is a small animal, not a very great deal larger than the common British hedgehog; the quills, however, are longer and stronger, and varied with alternate clouded marks of pure white and dark brownish grey; they are minutely barbed, so that if one enters the flesh it is with difficulty extracted, but will work through of itself in an opposite direction, and can then be easily pulled out.
Dogs and cattle often suffer great inconvenience from getting their muzzles filled with the quills of the porcupine, the former when worrying the poor little animal, and the latter by accidentally meeting a dead one among the herbage; great inflammation will sometimes attend the extraction.
<<Back Index Next>> D-Link book Top TWC mobile books
|