Adventure and adventurers > Away in the wilderness, or, Life among the red Indians and fur-traders of North America

116
AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS.
water, and to their credit be it said, that they
toasted and sang with the best of them.
At night there was a ball, and the ball beat
the dinner out of sight. Few indeed were the
women, but numerous were the men. Indian
women are not famous for grace or cleanliness,
poor things. But they enjoyed the ball, and they
did their best to dance. Such dancing ! They
seemed to have no joints. They stood up stilf as
lamp-posts, and went with an up-and-down motion
from side to side. But the men did the thing
bravely, especially the Indians. The only dances
attempted were Scotch reels, and the Indians tried
to copy the fur-traders ; but on finding this some¬
what difficult, they introduced some surprising
steps of their own, which threw the others entirely
into the shade 1 There was unfortunately no
fiddler, but there was a fiddle—one made of pine
wood by an Indian, with strings of deer-skin
sinew. Some of the boldest of the party scraped
time without regard to tune, and our friend Hey-
wood beat the kettle-drum. The tones of the
fiddle at last became so horrible, that it was
banished altogether, and they danced that night
to the kettle-drum !
Of course the fair bride was the queen of that
ball. Her countenance was the light of it, and
her modest, womanly manner had a softening in¬
fluence on the rough men who surrounded her.