The country, she said, was rather like
Norway, with mountains and great forests, lakes and streams, but far
colder. There were no fiords, and no cities. The people lived in tents
made of poles covered with bark, or hides. They dressed in the hides of
wild animals and lived by hunting and fishing. They had no reindeer,
horses, cattle, sheep or goats, no fowls, no pigs. They could not work
iron, nor did they spin or weave. The man and woman who had adopted her
treated her just like their own child.
The stories she had learned from these people were intensely interesting
to her listeners. There was one about a battle between the wasps and the
squirrels, and another about the beaver who wanted wings. One was about
a girl who was married to the Spirit of the Mountain and had a son
beautiful and straight and like any other boy except that he had stone
eyebrows. Then there was the tale about Klooskap tying up the White
Eagle of the Wind so that he could not flap his wings. After a short
time everything was so dirty and ill-smelling and unhealthy that
Klooskap had to go back and untie one wing, and let the wind blow to
clear the air and make the earth once more wholesome.
Wild apples fell, grain ripened, nights lengthened. Long ago the
twin-flower, violet, wild pansy, forget-me-not and yellow anemone had
left their fairy haunts, and there remained only the curving fantastic
fronds of the fern,--the dragon-grass.
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