, at the very moment when he
was beginning to despair. He now cared neither for distance, nor violence, nor
hardships. To his sanguine fancy and determined resolution, all the rest was
easily to be achieved. Such were his feelings and such in truth they seem'd to
be. With his cap cast on one side, and whistling a low air, he thrashed among
the bushes, in order to make a place suitable for the females to repose on,
while from time to time, he cast an approving glance at the agile form of Ellen
as she tripp'd past him engaged in her own share of the duty.
    »And so the wolf-tribe of the Pawnees have buried the hatchet with their
neighbors, 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 saw fit to interlard 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 even 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
favor, viz, that this continent can claim a more remote affinity with
civilization 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