n. I have nursed you from your infancy; for
your mother, owing to the ill-treatment of your father, died in giving
you birth. I have no relations beside you this side of the planet in
which I was born, and from which I was precipitated by female jealousy.
Your mother was my only child, and you are my only hope."

"I am glad my father is living," said Manabozho. "I shall set out in the
morning to visit him."

His grandmother would have discouraged him; saying it was a long
distance to the place where his father, Ningabiun, or the West, lived.

This information seemed rather to please than to disconcert Manabozho;
for by this time he had grown to such a size and strength that he had
been compelled to leave the narrow shelter of his grandmother's lodge
and to live out of doors. He was so tall that, if he had been so
disposed, he could have snapped off the heads of the birds roosting in
the topmost branches of the highest trees, as he stood up, without being
at the trouble to climb. And if he had at any time taken a fancy to one
of the same trees for a walking-stick, he would have had no more to do
than to pluck it up with his thumb and finger, and strip down the leaves
and twigs with the palm of his hand.

Bidding good-by to his venerable old grandmother, who pulled a very long
face over his departure, Manabozho set out at great headway, for he was
able to stride from one side of a prairie to the other at a single step.

He found his father on a high mountain-ground, far in the west. His
father espied his approach at a great distance, and bounded down the
mountain-side several miles to give him welcome, and, side-by-side,
apparently delighted with each other, they reached in two or three of
their giant paces the lodge of the West, which stood high up near the
clouds.

They spent some days in talking with each other--for these two great
persons did nothing on a small scale, and a whole day to deliver a
single sentence, such was the immensity of their discourse, was quite an
ordinary affair.

One evening, Manabozho asked his father what he was most afraid of on
earth.

He replied--"Nothing."

"But is there nothing you dread, here--nothing that would hurt you if
you took too much of it? Come, tell me."

Manabozho was very urgent; at last his father said:

"Yes, there is a black stone to be found a couple of hundred miles from
here, over that way," pointing as he spoke. "It is the only thing
earthly that I am afr