"And yet," said my comrade, as we sat coughing and rubbing our eyes in the painful shelter of the smoke, "there are worse trials than this in the civilised districts: social enmities, and newspaper scandals, and religious persecutions. The blackest fly I ever saw is the Reverend -----" but here his voice was fortunately choked by a fit of coughing.
A couple of wandering Indians--descendants of the Montagnais, on whose hunting domain we were travelling--dropped in at our camp that night as we sat around the fire. They gave us the latest news about the portages on our further journey; how far they had been blocked with fallen trees, and whether the water was high or low in the rivers--just as a visitor at home would talk about the effect of the strikes on the stock market, and the prospects of the newest organization of the non-voting classes for the overthrow of Tammany Hall. Every phase of civilisation or barbarism creates its own conversational currency. The weather, like the old Spanish dollar, is the only coin that passes everywhere.
