or a great length of time. This discovery satisfied me
respecting the many hemlock trees which I had observed stripped of
their bark."

Mackenzie found some of the older men here with long beards, and to
one of them he presented a pair of scissors for clipping his beard.

After describing some remarkable oblong "tables" (as they might be
called) of cedar wood--twenty feet long by eight feet broad--made of
thick cedar boards joined together with the utmost neatness, and
painted with hieroglyphics and the figures of animals; and his visit
to a kind of temple in the village, into the architecture of which
strangely carved and painted figures were interwoven; Mackenzie
goes on to relate an episode giving one a very vivid idea of the
helplessness of "native" medicine in many diseases.

He was taken to see a son of the chief, who was suffering from a
terrible ulcer in the small of his back, round which the flesh was
gangrened, one of his knees being afflicted in the same way. The poor
fellow was reduced to a skeleton, and apparently drawing very near to
death.

"I found the native physicians busy in practising their skill and art
on the patient. They blew on him, and then whistled; at times they
pressed their extended fingers with all their strength on his stomach;
they also put their forefingers doubled into his mouth, and spouted
water from their own with great violence into his face. To support
these operations the wretched sufferer was held up in a sitting
posture, and when they were concluded he was laid down and covered
with a new robe made of the skin of a lynx. I had observed that his
belly and breast were covered with scars, and I understood that they
were caused by a custom prevalent among them of applying pieces of
lighted touchwood to their flesh, in order to relieve pain or
demonstrate their courage. He was now placed on a broad plank, and
carried by six men into the woods, where I was invited to accompany
them. I could not conjecture what would be the end of this ceremony,
particularly as I saw one man carry fire, another an axe, and a third
dry wood. I was, indeed, disposed to suspect that, as it was their
custom to burn the dead, they intended to relieve the poor man from
his pain, and perform the last sad duty of surviving affection. When
they had advanced a short distance into the wood, they laid him upon a
clear spot, and kindled a fire against his back, when the physician
began to scarify the ulcer wi