and
well-filled ponds. He told them to ascend by the roots, which were those
of a great grape-vine. A while after the boys were missing. Another
while they had not returned; nor did they come back until the
Minnatarees had celebrated the feast of rejoicing for their death(2),
and the lying priest had, as he falsely said, in a vision seen them
inhabitants of the Land of Spirits.

One day, the Indians were surprised by the return of the boys. They came
back singing and dancing, and were grown so much, and looked so
different from what they did when they left the cavern, that their
father and mother scarcely knew them. They were sleek and fat; and when
they walked it was with so strong a step that the hollow space rung with
the sound of their feet. Their bodies were covered with something which
the Minnatarees had never seen before, but which they since know was
feathers and the skins of animals. They had blankets wrapt around them
of the skins of racoons and beavers. Each of them had at his back a
bundle of beautiful ripe grapes, and of the flesh of a great animal,
which they had been taught to kill by people looking much like the
Minnatarees, only handsomer and stronger--people who lived by hunting,
and delighted in shedding the blood of each other, who painted their
bodies with strange figures, and loved to drink a water which made them
crazy and boisterous.

On first emerging from the caverns, they came, they said, into a world
where all was light and beauty. It was directly over that part of the
cavern where our tribe dwelt. They saw a great round ball of fire, which
gave light and heat to the earth, and whose beams it was which had shot
down through the fissures of the rock, partially illumining the cavern.
The earth above them they had found covered with green, and scented with
sweet-smelling flowers. Here and there were beautiful groves of trees,
in whose shady branches birds of soft notes and varied and lovely
plumage were singing all the day long. Its waters, which flowed cool and
clear, were peopled by sportive fishes, and by many kinds of fowls,
whose motions in their element were beautiful to the eye; and whose
meat, when cooked, was exceedingly sweet to the taste. They saw a
beautiful river, gliding rapidly through banks, shaded by lofty trees;
its smooth current wafting the Indian brave to distant expeditions of
war and the chase. Here were vast herds of wild animals, called by the
inhabitants bisons, who