all of plain English manufacture. A salt-cellar contained salt and pepper mixed in unequal proportions. There were just as many plates as expected guests. A large white fish, boiled, and cut up in good taste, occupied a dish in the centre. There was a dish of sugar made from the acer saccharinum. There were no stools, or chairs, but small apukwa mats were spread for each guest. I observed the dish of hard bread, which came opportunely, as there was no other representative form of bread. The chief sat down at the head of his breakfast, in the oriental fashion. Imitating his example, I sat down with a degree of repose and nonchalance, as if this had been the position I had practised from childhood. His empress--Equa,[177] sat on one side, near him, to pour out the tea, but neither ate nor drank anything herself. Her position was also that of the oriental custom for females; that is, both feet were thrown to one side, and doubled beside her.[178] The chief helped us to fish and to tea, taking the cups from his wife. He was dignified, grave, yet easy, and conversed freely, and the meal passed off agreeably and without a pause, or the slightest embarrassment. This was, perhaps, owing in part to my having been acquainted with him before, he having visited me at my agency at Sault Ste. Marie in 1828, and sat as a guest at my own table. Nor, in a people so loath to give their confidence as the Indian, is the fact undeserving of mention, of general affiliation to the tribe, caused by my marriage with a grand-daughter of the ruling chief of Lake Superior, a lady of refinement and intelligence, who was the child of a gentleman of Antrim, Ireland, where she was educated. [175] From the word _puka_, abrupt phenomenon, and the verb _saugi_, outflowing. [176] From _Aizhenagozze_, countenance, and _kozh_, a bill of a bird, or snout of an animal. The word is appropriately translated _guelle_ by the Canadians. [177] _Equa_, a female; it is not, appropriately, the term of wife, for which the vocabulary has a peculiar term, but is generally employed in the sense of woman. [178] I have observed this to be the universal custom among all the aboriginal females of America. They never part the feet.