fforded him no
pleasure, for who was to share his spoils? He found no joy in pursuing
the salmon, for no one lived to reward his successful quest with the
smile of approbation. He told his discontent in the ears of his people,
and spoke of his determination, at all events, to rejoin his beloved
maiden. She had but removed, he said, to some happier region, as the
Arctic birds fly south at the approach of winter; and it required but
due diligence on his part to find her. Having prepared himself, as a
hunter prepares himself, with a store of pemmican, or dried beef, and
armed himself with his war-spear and bow and arrow, he set out upon his
journey to the Land of Souls. Directed by the old tradition of his
fathers, he travelled south to reach that region, leaving behind him the
great star, and the fields of eternal ice. As he moved onwards he found
a more pleasant region succeeding to that in which he had lived. Daily,
hourly, he remarked the change. The ice grew thinner, the air warmer,
the trees taller. Birds, such as he had never seen before, sang in the
bushes, and fowls of many kinds, before unknown, were pluming themselves
in the warm sun on the shores of the lake. The gay woodpecker was
tapping the hollow beech; the swallow and the martin were skimming along
the level of the green vales. He heard no more the cracking of branches
of trees beneath the weight of icicles and snow;--he saw no more the
spirits of departed men dancing wild dances on the skirts of the
Northern clouds(2); and the farther he travelled the milder grew the
skies, the longer was the period of the sun's stay upon the earth, and
the softer, though less brilliant, the light of the moon. Noting these
changes as he went with a joyful heart--for they were indications of his
near approach to the land of joy and delight--he came at length to a
cabin, situated on the brow of a steep hill, in the middle of a narrow
road. At the door of this cabin stood a man of a most ancient and
venerable appearance. He was bent nearly double with age; his locks were
white as snow; his eyes were sunk very far into his head, and the flesh
was wasted from his bones till they were like trees from which the bark
had been peeled. He was clothed in a robe of white goat-skin, and a long
staff supported his tottering limbs whithersoever he walked. The
Chepewyan began to tell him who he was, and why he had come thither, but
the aged man prevented him, by saying that he knew all. "T