"
"Nurse, is there real rice growing in the Rice Lake? I heard my governess
say that rice grew only in warm countries. Now, your lake must be
very cold if your uncle walked across the ice."
"This rice, my lady, is not real rice. I heard a gentleman tell my
father that it was, properly speaking, a species of oats [Footnote:
Zizania, or water oats]--water oats, he called it; but the common name
for it is wild rice. This wild rice grows in vast beds in the lake
in patches of many acres. It will grow in water from eight to ten or
twelve feet deep; the grassy leaves float upon the water like long
narrow green ribbons. In the month of August, the stem that is to bear
the flower and the grain rises straight up above the surface, and light
delicate blossoms come out of a pale straw colour and lilac. They are
very pretty, and wave in the wind with a rustling noise. In the month
of October, when the rice is ripe, the leaves torn yellow, and the
rice-heads grow heavy and droop; then the squaws--as the Indian women
are called--go out in their birch-bark canoes, holding in one hand
a stick, in the other a short curved paddle with a sharp edge. With
this they bend down the rice across the stick and strike off the heads,
which fall into the canoe, as they push it along through the rice-beds.
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