“In this condition we sat, and in this manner we nodded away the night, as far as I recollect of it, catching the broken bits of sleep, (that were even painful to us when we got them), until the morning’s rays at length gave us a view of the scene that was around us!! Oh, all ye brick-makers, ye plasterers, and soft-soap manufacturers! put all your imaginations in a ferment together, and see if ye can invent a scene like this! Here _was_ a ‘fix’ to be sure. The sun arose in splendour and in full, upon this everlasting and boundless scene of ‘_saft soap_’ and grease, which admitted us not to move. The whole hill was constituted entirely of tough clay, and on each side and above us there was no possibility of escape; and one single step over the brink of the place where we had ascended, would inevitably have launched us into the river below, the distance of an hundred feet! Here, looking like hogs just risen from a mud puddle, or a buffalo bull in his wallow, we sat, (_and had to sit_,) admiring the wide-spread and beautiful landscape that lay steeping and smoking before us, and our little boat, that looked like a nutshell beneath us, hanging at the shore; telling stories and filling up the while with nonsensical garrulity, until the sun’s warming rays had licked up the mud, and its dried surface, about eleven o’clock, gave us foothold, when we cautiously, but safely descended to the bottom; and then, at the last jump, which brought his feet to _terra firma_, Ba’tiste exclaimed, ‘Well, we have cheatee de dam muskeet, ha!’” And this, reader, is not ‘_the story_,’ but one of the little incidents which stood exactly in the way, and could not well be got over without a slight notice, being absolutely necessary, as a key, or kind of glossary, for the proper understanding of the tale that is to be told. There is _blood_ and _butchery_ in the story that is now to be related; and it should be read by every one who would form a correct notion of the force of Indian superstitions. Three mighty warriors, proud and valiant, licked the dust, and all in consequence of one of the portraits I painted; and as my brush was the prime mover of all these misfortunes, and my life was sought to heal the wound, I must be supposed to be knowing to and familiar with the whole circumstances, which were as—(I was going to say, as follow) but my want of time and your want of patience, compel me to break off here, and I promise to go right on with _the story of the Dog_ in my next Letter, and I advise the reader not to neglect or overlook it. [23] This very distinguished old chief, I have learned, died a few weeks after I painted his portrait. [24] The reader and traveller who may have this book with him, should follow the Côteau a few miles to the North of the Quarry, for the highest elevation and greatest sublimity of view.