reat Spirit. It was situated in the middle of a flowery vale,
watered by cool and refreshing streams, and shaded by groves of larch
and cypress. Many villages of the dead were scattered over it; here one,
and there one, like single buffaloes feeding on a prairie. Akkeewaisee
asked if the souls of his father and mother had reached the happy vale,
and was directed to the village in which they dwelt. He found, gathered
in this village, the souls of all his race who had passed the rock; the
joyful reunion had there taken place for a long succession of ages--of
fathers and mothers, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters: they now
composed one great family. Their life--the life of all assembled in the
valley of the Waktan Tanka--was blissful and happy beyond measure. They
planted corn, which never failed to grow tall; they hunted the buffalo
through flowery vales, till they pierced his side with a never-varying
arrow, Akkeewaisee asked the spirits if it was permitted to them to
revisit the land of the living. They answered never, except when
children were about to die, and then their departed relatives recrossed
the rock of judgment to guide their tender feet to their latest home.

Having lain three moons in the trance, the soul of the Aged Man
re-animated his body, and he awoke. He related to the people of the tribe
his dream of the Land of departed Spirits, and it has travelled down to
my time as I have told it to my brother.

II.--THE DELAWARE HEAVEN.

The stranger has been shown the Dahcotah land of souls--let him behold
that of the Delawares. The Delawares, who are the grandfather of
nations, believe that the habitation of good spirits is beyond the
beautiful sky, which forms the partition between them and those who are
doomed yet longer to inhabit the frail, and sickly, and feverish,
tenement of flesh. The road to this bright land of spirits leads over a
mighty and fearful rock, upon which the sky rolls to and fro with a
stupendous sound. I am asked, "How do the Delawares know this?" I will
tell you.

There were, once upon a time, in the tribe of the Unamis or Turtles, the
most potent and warlike tribe of the Delawares, two valiant warriors,
who feared nothing greatly but shame and disgrace. One of them loved and
was beloved by a beautiful girl of the same nation, who, in a
thoughtless moment, for at no other would she have made her lover incur
so great a danger, expressed a wish to know if the soul of her deceas