he
point where the Huron passes--how to tread the sharp and steep rock
upon which the Chippewa finds entrance to his land of rest--all this,
and much more, to be attained by no other means, was learned from the
strong waters given to the Abnakis by the strange spirit. And
Wangewaha, the dreamer, woke from his sleep, rubbed his eyes, and
indulged in deep thought of what the dream might portend.

[Footnote A: Burning water, ardent spirits, commonly called by them
the "fire-eater."]

Again he sunk to sleep, and again he dreamed. Still his dream was of
strange creatures, aliens to his land, and usurpers of the rights of
its native sons. But they had multiplied till their numbers were as
the sands upon the sea shore. He stood in imagination upon a lofty
hill, and cast his eyes upon the broad lands beneath him. How changed!
The forests had been swept away, the land was cleared of its mossy old
oaks, and lofty pines, and cedars, but, where they once raised their
leafy heads to the winds of heaven, now rose cabins, white as the
folds of a cloud, and glittering in the sun like a sheet of ice in a
winter's day. The broad and rapid river, as well as the waters of the
Great Lake, was marked in streaks of white foam by the many clouds
traversing it, like that he had seen in his first dream. The lofty
mountains were seamed like the breast of a tattooed warrior(2), by the
roads which the strangers had made over it. The vales waved with the
yellow wheat, and, herds of tame bisons lay resting on the grassy
knolls, or stood grouped at the outlets of the fields, which the
industrious strangers had girded in with fences of rock.

And what had become of the former inhabitants of the soil? where were
the dusky men who met the strange creatures upon the shore, and bade
them welcome, and gave them the fat things of the sea and the land for
their subsistence, and warm furs to protect them from the searching
winds of the Snow-Moon, and taught them how to follow the trail of
forest animals, and to thread, unerringly, their way for many
successive nights through the lonely wilderness, by the flow of
streams and the course of fishes, and the light of the Hunter's Star,
and the moss upon the oaks, and the flight of birds? Listen, and I
will tell you.

He sees upon the edge of a stream, overgrown with a thick grove of
alders and luxuriant vines, an Indian man and woman. The woman held in
her arms a dying child--at the feet of the man, lay a lean