through caves
and cataracts; where, deprived of the amusements and novelties which
would recreate his imagination, the farmer allows his mind to be
oppressed with strange fancies, and though he may never avow the
feeling, from the fear of not meeting with sympathy, he broods over it
and is a slave to the wild phantasmagoria of his brain. The principal
cause of this is, the monotony and solitude of his existence.

At these confines of civilisation, the American is always a hunter, and
those who dwell on the smaller farms, at the edges of forests, often
depend, for their animal food, upon the skill of the male portion of
their community. In the fall of the year, the American shoulders his
rifle, and goes alone into the wilds, to "see after his pigs, horses,
and cows." Constantly on the look-out for deer and wild bees, he
resorts to the most secluded spots, to swamps, mountain ridges, or along
the bushy windings of some cool stream. Constant views of nature in her
grandeur, the unbroken silence of his wanderings, causes a depression of
the mind, and, as his faculties of sight and hearing are ever on the
stretch, it affects his nervous system. He starts at the falling of a
dried leaf, and, with a keen and painful sensation, he scrutinises the
withered grass before him, aware that at every step he may trample upon
some venomous and deadly reptile. Moreover, in his wanderings, he is
often pressed with hunger, and is exposed to a great deal of fatigue.

"Fast in the wilds, and you will dream of spirits," is an Indian axiom,
and a very true one. If to the above we add, that his mind is already
prepared to receive the impressions of the mysterious and marvellous, we
cannot wonder at their becoming superstitious. As children, they imbibe
a disposition for the marvellous; during the long evenings of winter,
when the snow is deep and the wild wind roars through the trees, the old
people will smoke their pipes near huge blazing logs, and relate to them
some terrible adventure. They speak of unearthly noises heard near some
caves, of hair-breadth escapes in encounters with evil spirits, under
the form of wild animals; and many will whisper, that at such a time of
night, returning from some neighbouring market, they have met with the
evil one in the forest, in such and such a spot, where the two roads
cross each other, or where the old oak has been blasted by lightning.

The boy grows to manhood, but these family traditions