beautiful and secluded _prairie_,
that just afforded a vista of the river through the cypress swamp between.
A number of men and women seemed busily engaged in the decoration of
others with belts, beads, and brilliant-coloured garments; and these
latter seemed passive or asleep. Logan laid down the load he carried in
his blanket, and unwrapped the burden that had so long attracted my
attention. "'Tis my grandsire!" said he: "he has only been two years
buried:--I have brought him far. Aid me to cleanse the brave old limbs and
skull from these worms, that his spirit may rejoice over the feast with
his red children. Haste! my father yonder is painted and dressed already."

* * * * *

Before I quitted Kentucky, I made a point of visiting the celebrated and
immense nitre caverns or catacombs of the limestone region. Here I found
the mummies of the pigmy race that once inhabited the gigantic valley of
the Mississippi, adorned with strings of shell-wampum and turkeys'
feathers--seated in death like the ancient Naso-menes, grinning at me with
their long _inhuman_ fore-teeth--and came out as wise as I went in.

* * * * *

"O," said the captain, "a burial in Canada is no trifle in winter. Just
before you arrived, our drummer died, and we mustered spades, picks, and
shovels, to dig a grave for him; but the ground was one rock every where,
and after trying twenty places we found--that we had spoiled our tools. It
took the armourer next day to steel them all. The third day we got down
four inches and a half, in the softest soil we could find; but it would
only grind up pinch by pinch. The fourth day the armourer was at work
again. The fifth day the whole company turned out in a rage with the
ground, and having got under the frost in some degree, sunk the grave full
nine inches more. This night another soldier, a corporal, died; and his
comrades were almost dead with disappointment and vexation. The bodies
would keep in the frost very well; but we had not a spare room in the
barrack, and their comrades wanted to get them out of the way of a wedding.
Well, sir, the sixth day I divided the garrison in two, and set them at
separate graves; but, unluckily, they drank to keep up their spirits in
the battle with the frost, and fought about the corporal's right of
priority, and the freezing point of brandy. Worst of all, they forgot to
cover the new picked surfaces with straw