savages, thinking there were men in the place, would go away.

There was one girl who was a captive among the Indians for three weeks.
One day she saw a horse running loose in the woods. She stripped some
tough bark from a tree, and made a bridle of it. Then she caught the
horse, and put her bark bridle on him. It was just growing dark when
she climbed on his bare back, for she had no saddle. She turned the
horse's head toward the settlements, and rode hard all night. The next
morning she was safe among her friends.




THE COMING OF TEA AND COFFEE.


When the first settlers came to this country, tea and coffee were
unknown to them. The favorite drink of that time was a kind of weak
beer, which was usually made at home. The first settlers in America
could not buy drinks such as they had had in England, and in a new
country they often could not make them. So they found out ways of
making other drinks in place of them. What we call root beer and birch
beer, and a drink flavored with the chips of the hickory tree, were
made in New England. Farther south the people made a kind of drink by
mixing water and molasses together, and putting in Indian corn.

Such drinks were taken at meals as we take tea and coffee. People also
drank a great deal of cider. As the cows hardly ever gave any milk in
winter, children were given cider and water to drink. But about fifty
years after the time that the first settlers came to this country,