Louis, however, who was fond of contrivances, made an oven, by hollowing out a place near the hearth, and lining it with stones, filling up the intervals with wood ashes and such clay as they could find, beaten into a smooth mortar.

Such cement answered very well, and the oven was heated by filling it with hot embers; these were removed when it was sufficiently heated, and the meat or roots placed within, the oven being covered over with a flat stone previously heated before the fire, and covered with live coals.

This sort of oven had often been described by old Jacob, as one in common use among some of the Indian tribes in the lower province, in which they cook small animals, and make excellent meat of them; they could bake bread also in this oven, if they had had flour to use.

_[FN: This primitive oven is much like what voyagers have described as in use among the natives of many of the South Sea islands.]_ Since the finishing of the house and furnishing it, the young people were more reconciled to their lonely life, and even entertained decided home feelings for their little log cabin.

They never ceased, it is true, to talk of their parents, and brothers, and sisters, and wonder if all were well, and whether they still hoped for their return, and to recall all their happy days spent in the home which they now feared they were destined never again to behold.