I wanted to go and look at a place
right about the middle of the
island that I'd found when I was exploring; so we started and soon got to it, because the
island was only three miles long and a
quarter of a mile wide.
This place was a
tolerable long,
steep hill or
ridge about forty foot high. We had a rough time getting to the top, the sides were so
steep and the bushes so thick. We tramped and clumb around all over it, and by and by found a good big
cavern in the rock, most up to the top on the side towards Illinois. The
cavern was as big as two or three rooms bunched together, and Jim could stand up
straight in it. It was cool in there. Jim was for putting our traps in there
right away, but I said we didn't want to be climbing up and down there all the time.
Jim said if we had the
canoe hid in a good place, and had all the traps in the
cavern, we could rush there if anybody was to come to the
island, and they would never find us without dogs. And, besides, he said them little birds had said it was going to rain, and did I want the things to get wet?
So we went back and got the
canoe, and paddled up
abreast the
cavern, and lugged all the traps up there. Then we hunted up a place close by to
hide the
canoe in, amongst the thick willows. We took some fish off of the lines and set them again, and begun to get ready for dinner.
The door of the
cavern was big enough to roll a hogshead in, and on one side of the door the floor stuck out a little bit, and was flat and a good place to build a fire on. So we built it there and cooked dinner.