ll lovers of blood, whether man or animal; misfortune, the
destiny, in every quarter of the globe, of every barbarous race, which
contact with, a civilised one cannot civilise; and the dreams of poets
and sentimentalists have invested with a character wholly incompatible
with his condition. Individual virtues may be, and indeed frequently are,
found among men in a natural state; but honour, justice, and generosity,
as characteristics of the mass, are refinements belonging only to an
advanced stage of civilisation.

In the midst of this barbarous display of unsatisfied rage, several of
the savages approached the unfortunate Roland, and among them the old
Piankeshaw, who, flourishing his hatchet, already clotted with blood, and
looking more like a demon than a human being, made an effort to dash out
the soldier's brains; in which, however, he was restrained by two younger
savages, who caught him in their arms, and muttered somewhat in their own
tongue, which mollified his wrath in a moment causing him to burst into a
roar of obstreperous laughter. "Ees,--good!" he cried, grinning with
apparent benevolence and friendship over the helpless youth: "no hurt
Long-knife; take him Piankeshaw nation; make good friend squaw,
papoose--all brudders, Long-knife." With these expressions, of the
purport of which Roland could understand but little, he left him,
retiring with the rest, as Roland soon saw, to conceal or bury the bodies
of his slain comrades, which were borne in the arms of the survivors to
the bottom of the hill, and there, carefully and in silence, deposited
among thickets, or in crannies of the rock.

This ceremony completed, Roland was again visited by his Piankeshaw
friend, and the two young warriors who had saved his life before, and
were perhaps still fearful of trusting it entirely to the tender mercies
of the senior. It was fortunate for Roland that he was thus attended; for
the old warrior had no sooner approached him than he began to weep and
groan, uttering an harangue, which although addressed, as it seemed,
entirely to the prostrate captive, was in the Indian tongue, and
therefore wholly wasted upon his ears. Nevertheless, he could perceive
that the Indian was relating something that weighed very heavily upon his
mind, that he was warming with the subject, and even working himself up
into a passion; and, indeed, he had not spoken very long before his
visage changed from grief to wrath, and from wrath to the e