“It must have been a proud moment for De Soto when he first looked upon the lower waters of this magnificent river,” said Mrs. Lester, as she sat with Norman on the guards of the boat the next morning; “what a scene it must have been; the canoes of the Indians floating on the waters, while on the banks hundreds of the red men, with white feathers waving o’er their brows, were gazing with wonder at their new visitors. “And when he and his followers had crossed the bank, and the Indians knelt to the white chief, whom they thought was one of the children of the sun, to ask him for life for the dying, he told them to pray to God, who alone could help them. “Soon in this dreary western wilderness the princely De Soto breathed his last. His people, fearing to let the Indians know of his death, wrapped up his body, and buried it beneath the waters of the great river he had discovered; while, for the first time, a Christian requiem, softly chanted in the darkness, mingled with the music of its winds and waves.”[1] Footnote 1: De Soto never saw the Upper Mississippi. He ascended the Lower Mississippi as far as the Missouri. He died and was buried somewhere near the mouth of the Arkansas River.—ED. “And so,” said Norman, “the mighty river is a memorial of him. How much I would like to have seen birch-canoes floating on the river. And I do believe there is one made fast to the shore just by that ‘dug-out.’” “What an ugly word ‘dug-out’ is; so different from the birch canoe,” said Mrs. Lester. “But, mother, it just tells what it is; a trunk of a tree, hollowed or dug out in the shape of a boat. But see how pretty that bark canoe is! Don’t you remember we were reading about it in Hiawatha; how he girdled the birch-tree just above its roots, and just below its lower branches, then cut it from top to bottom, and stripped it, unbroken, from the tree with a wooden wedge?” “Well, what did he do then?” “He made a framework of cedar-boughs, like two bended bows, and then he sewed the bark together with the roots of the larch-tree; bound it to the framework, and stopped up all the seams and crevices with resin from the fir-tree. And then he embroidered it with porcupine quills.” “You remember pretty well how the canoe was made, Norman. I wish you could recall some of those lines about the birch canoe you were so fond of repeating.” “I think I can, mother,” said Norman; “at any rate I will repeat what I remember:” “Thus the birch canoe was builded In the valley, by the river, In the bosom of the forest; And the forest’s life was in it, All its mystery, and its magic, All the lightness of the birch-tree, All the toughness of the cedar, All the larch’s supple sinews; And it floated on the river Like a yellow leaf in autumn, Like a yellow water-lily.”