They feast, they fiddle, they drink, they sing, they dance, they frolic and fight, until they are all as mad as so many drunken Indians.

The publicans are all obedience to their commands, never hesitating to let them run up scores without limit, knowing that, when their own money is expended, the purses of their employers must answer for the bill, or the voyage must be delayed.

Neither was it possible, at that time, to remedy the matter at Mackinaw.

In that amphibious community there was always a propensity to wrest the laws in favor of riotous or mutinous boatmen.

It was necessary, also, to keep the recruits in good humor, seeing the novelty and danger of the service into which they were entering, and the ease with which they might at anytime escape it by jumping into a canoe and going downstream.
Such were the scenes that beset Mr.Hunt, and gave him a foretaste of the difficulties of his command.