of the duty.

"And so the Wolf-tribe of the Pawnees have buried the hatchet with their
neighbours, the Konzas?" said the trapper, pursuing a discourse which
he had scarcely permitted to flag, though it had been occasionally
interrupted by the different directions with which he occasionally saw
fit to interrupt it. (The reader will remember that, while he spoke to
the native warrior in his own tongue, he necessarily addressed his white
companions in English.) "The Loups and the light-fac'd Red-skins are
again friends. Doctor, that is a tribe of which I'll engage you've often
read, and of which many a round lie has been whispered in the ears of
the ignorant people, who live in the settlements. There was a story of
a nation of Welshers, that liv'd hereaway in the prairies, and how they
came into the land afore the uneasy minded man, who first let in the
Christians to rob the heathens of their inheritance, had ever dreamt
that the sun set on a country as big as that it rose from. And how they
knew the white ways, and spoke with white tongues, and a thousand other
follies and idle conceits."

"Have I not heard of them?" exclaimed the naturalist, dropping a piece
of jerked bison's meat, which he was rather roughly discussing, at
the moment. "I should be greatly ignorant not to have often dwelt
with delight on so beautiful a theory, and one which so triumphantly
establishes two positions, which I have often maintained are
unanswerable, even without such living testimony in their favour--viz.
that this continent can claim a more remote affinity with civilisation
than the time of Columbus, and that colour is the fruit of climate and
condition, and not a regulation of nature. Propound the latter question
to this Indian gentleman, venerable hunter; he is of a reddish tint
himself, and his opinion may be said to make us masters of the two sides
of the disputed point."

"Do you think a Pawnee is a reader of books, and a believer of printed
lies, like the idlers in the towns?" retorted the old man, laughing.
"But it may be as well to humour the likings of the man, which, after
all, it is quite possible are neither more nor less than his natural
gift, and therefore to be followed, although they may be pitied. What
does my brother think? all whom he sees here have pale skins, but the
Pawnee warriors are red; does he believe that man changes with the
season, and that the son is not like his father?"

The young warrior regarded his i