here, in their fine neglect of the two
sternest of self-imposed, human limitations, the religious instinct is
manifest. As it would be sacrilege to count God's breaths, were that
possible, so to them it seems a kind of blasphemy to number the
recurrence of their own small perceptions when the Divine Perceived
seems so entirely unconscious of their very existence. Hence it
happens that one does not often hear a traveller speak of having
journeyed so many days or miles; his division is more casual, and
embraces only his own immediate actions--he has travelled so many
"sleeps," nothing more.

As a rule, Indians are utterly deficient in the time-sense and can
give no intelligent account of their age. Their calendar is enshrined,
if they have one, in symbols which they use as decorations, painted
on the inside of their finest skins. They make their reckoning of the
years from some event which was once important to themselves, or to
their tribe. Thus, stars falling from the top to the bottom of a robe
represent the year of 1833, and an etching of an Indian with a broken
leg and a horn on his head stands for the year in which Hay-waujina,
One Horn, had his leg "killed." Back of that which is comparatively
immediate to their own experience, they have ceased to count or to be
inquisitive.

"Real are the dreams of Gods, and smoothly pass
Their pleasures in a long immortal dream."

So with both the joys and sorrows of these Northland men; hurry is not
necessary where time is unrecognised, and turbulence of emotion,
whether of grief or gladness, is felt to be out of place in a
_dream-being_, whose sole reality is its unreality. Their personal
unimportance to the Universe, and remoteness from the Market-place of
Life allow them to dawdle. Their experiences have no sharp edges, no
abrupt precipices, no divisive gulfs, no defined beginnings and
endings. The book of their sojourn in this world has neither chapters
nor headings; the page runs on without hindrance from tragedy to
comedy, comedy to farce, farce to melodrama, and thence to tragedy
again--always it returns to tragedy. They stride round the Circle of
the Emotions without halting, merging from joy into sorrow without
preface, till one day the feet grow wearier and lag, the eyes grow
clear and, almost without knowing it, as did Strangeways, their dream
going from them, they awake--motionlessly pass out of life, and enter
into _What_?

If smoothness of passage a