A portion was also parched, which was simply done by putting the rice dry into the iron pot, and setting it on hot embers, stirring the grain till it burst: it was then stored by for use.

Rice thus prepared is eaten dry, as a substitute for bread, by the Indians.

The lake was now swarming with wild fowl of various kinds; crowds of ducks were winging their way across it from morning till night, floating in vast flocks upon its surface, or rising in noisy groups if an eagle or fish-hawk appeared sailing with slow, majestic circles above them, then settling down with noisy splash upon the calm water.

The shores, too, were covered with these birds, feeding on the fallen acorns which fell ripe and brown with every passing breeze; the berries of the dogwood also furnished them with food; but the wild rice seemed the great attraction, and small shell-fish and the larvae of many insects that had been dropped into the waters, there to come to perfection in due season, or to form a provision for myriads of wild fowl that had come from the far north-west to feed upon them, guided by that instinct which has so beautifully been termed by one of our modern poetesses, "God's gift to the weak" _[FN: Mrs.Southey.]_.