p. 201

211

Brown County

the lakes, in some instances of cedar, fir, hemlock, and tamarack; and a little back of the lakes, of sugar maple, white maple, white and yellow birch, poplar, bass, and hemlock. The soil is of a nature to be adapted to the culture of whear, rye, grass, oats, flax, hemp, and potatoes. In some places the soil is rocky, although no very large masses or ledges of rock were observed. The manufacture of maple sugar is carried on to a considerable extent by the Indians of this region. Many of their "sugar bushes" were observed, and from the oldness of the marks upon the trees, the Indians must have known the art of extracting this luxury from the forest from an early date of their history. A very good kind of potatoe (wild?) is raised here, and the mode of preserving which was entirely new to us. The potatoes which are of an oblong shape and not larger than a man's thumb, are partially boiled, and carefully peeled while hot, without breaking the pulp, and string like so many beads upon a twine or tough thread of bark, and then hung in festoons on the ridge=pole of the wigwam, over the smoke of the fire where they become thoroughly dry. This process renders