De Tocqueville's Journey into the Desert   { Return to De Tocqueville Assignments }

 

 

But I must get back to the road to Saginaw. We had already been going forward for five hours in the most complete ignorance of where we were when our Indians halted, and the elder, who was called Sagan Cuisco, drew a line in the sand. He pointed to one of the ends, saying, 'Miché-Couté-Ouinque' (that is the Indian name for Flint River), to the other pronouncing the name Saginaw, and, making a point in the middle of the line, he showed us that we had come half-way and ought to rest for a few moments. The sun was already high in the sly, and we would gladly have accepted the suggestion he made to us if we bad seen any water within reach. But seeing none anywhere near, we made a sign to the Indian that we wanted to eat and drink at the same time. He understood at once and set off again as rapidly as before. An hour on from there he halted again and pointed to a spot thirty paces away in the wood, where his gestures indicated that there was water. Without waiting for our answer or help- us to dismount, he went there himself; we hastened to follow him. A great tree had recently been blown over by die wind on that spot. In the hole where its roots had been there was a little rain water. That was the fountain to which our guide had led us without appearing to think that one could hesitate to make use of such a drink. We opened our knapsack; another blow! The heat bad completely ruined our provisions, and we were reduced to a very small piece of bread, all that we had been able to find at Flint River, for all our dinner. Add to that a cloud of mosquitoes congregating near the water, so that one had to fight them off with one hand while one put a bite into one's mouth with the other, and you will have some idea of a picnic in a virgin forest. While we were eating, our Indians stayed sitting with arms crossed on the trunk of the fallen tree I mentioned before. When they saw that we had finished, they made a sign that they were hungry too. We showed our empty knapsack. They shook their heads without saying a word. The Indian has no concep- of what regular hours for meals are. He gorges himself on food when he gets the chance and then fasts until he gets another chance of satisfying his appetite. Wolves behave the same in like circumstances. We soon thought of mounting our horses, but saw with great alarm that our mounts had disappeared. Stung by the mosquitoes and pricked by hunger, they had strayed from the path where we left them, and it was only with difficulty, that we succeeded in getting on their tracks. If we bad stayed for a quarter of an hour more without paying attention, we should have woken up, like Sancho, with the saddle between our knees. We heartily blessed the mosquitoes that had made us think so soon of moving, and set off again. Every moment our horses had to force their way through thick bushes or jump over the trunks of huge trees that barred our way, At the end of about two hours of very difficult going we came to a stream that was not very deep but bad very high banks. We crossed it by a ford, and when we bad climbed up to the top of the opposite bank, we saw a field of corn and two cabins very like log-houses. We realised as we came close that we were in a hub In&an settlement. The log-houses were wigwams. Otherwise the deepest solitude prevailed there as in the surrounding forest. When he came to the first of these abandoned dwellings, Sagan Cuisco stopped; he paid close attention to all the objects around, and then putting his carbine down, he came up to us. First he drew a line in the sand, showing us in the same manner as before that we bad not yet covered more than two-thirds of the way; he then got up, pointed to the sun and made signs to indicate that it was descending rapidly to the horizon. He then looked at the wigwam and shut his eyes. This language was very easy to understand; he wanted us to sleep on that spot. I admit that the proposition surprised us a lot, and did not please us at all. We had not eaten since the morning, and were but moderately anxious to go to bed without supper. The sombre and savage majesty of the sights we had seen since the morning, the complete isolation in which we were, the fierce countenances of our guides, with whom it was impossible to make any contact-in all that there was nothing to inspire us with confidence. Moreover, there was something strange in the Indians' behaviour that was far from reassuring us. The way we had gone for the last two hours seemed even less frequented than that we bad travelled on before. No one had ever told us that we should have to pass an Indian village, and everyone had on the contrary assured us that one could go in one day from Flint River to Saginaw. So we could not conceive why our guides wanted to keep us for the night in this wilderness. We insisted on going on. The Indian made a sign that we should be surprised by darkness in the forest. To force our guides to continue the journey would have been a dangerous attempt. We decided to tempt their cupidity. But the Indian is the most philosophic of all men. He has few needs and so few desires. Civilisation has no hold an hot he is unaware of or scorns its charms. But I had noticed that Sagan Cuisco had paid particular attention to a little wicker-covered bottle that hung at my side. A bottle that does not get broken. There was an object whose usefulness struck his senses and which had aroused his real admiration. My rifle and my bottle were the only parts of my European gear that had seemed able to rouse his envy. I made him a sign that I would give him my bottle, if be would take us at once to Saginaw. The Indian then seemed to be struggling violently with himself. He looked at the sun again and then at the ground. Finally making up his mind, be seized his carbine, and putting his hand to his mouth, raised a cry of 'Ouh! ouh!' and darted in front of us into the bushes. We followed him at fast trot, and forcing a way through for ourselves, bad soon lost sight of the Indian dwellings. Our guides ran like that for two hours faster than they had yet gone; but night gained on us, and the last rays of the sun were beginning to disappear behind the forest trees when Sagan Cuisco was suddenly seized with a violent nose-bleed. Accustomed though this young man, like his brother, seemed to be to bodily exercise, it was clear that fatigue and want of food were beginning to drain his strength. We ourselves began to be afraid that they would give up the undertaking and *want to sleep under a tree. So we took the decision to make them ride in turns on our horses. The Indians accepted our offer without surprise or humility. It was an odd sight to see these half-naked men solemnly seated on an English saddle and carrying our game-bags and our slung rifles with bandoliers, while we laboured along on foot in front of them. At length night came on and a freezing damp began to spread under the foliage. Then darkness gave a new and terrible aspect to the forest. All around, one could see nothing but gatherings of confused masses, without shape or symmetry, strange disproportionate forms, incoherent sights, and fantastic images that seemed to come from the sick imagination of a fever bed. (The gigantic and the ridiculous rubbed shoulders there as close as in the literature of our day.) Never had our footsteps raised more echoes; never had the silence of the forest seemed more fearsome. One might say that the buzzing of the mosquitoes was the only breathing of this sleeping world. The farther we went on, the darker did the shadows grow, and nothing but the occasional flight of a firefly through the woods traced a thread of light in their depths. Too late we realised how right the Indians' advice had been, but there was no question now of retreat. So we pressed on as quickly as our strength and the night would allow. After an hour we came out of the wood and into a vast prairie. Three times our guides yelled out a savage cry that echoed like the discordant notes of a tom-tom. An answer came from the distance. In five minutes we came to the edge of a river in such darkness that we could not see the opposite bank. The Indians made a halt at this spot; they wrapped themselves up in their blankets to escape the mosquitoes' stings, and lying down on the grass, they soon formed no more than a scarcely perceptible heap of wool in which no one could have recognised the shape of a man. We too got to the ground, and patiently waited for what was going to happen. A few minutes later a faint sound could be beard, and something approached the bank. It was an Indian canoe, about ten feet long, and shaped out of a single tree. The man who crouched in the bottom of this fragile bark was dressed and looked completely like an Indian. He spoke to our guides, who at his order hastened to take our saddles off and put them in the canoe. As I was getting ready to get into it myself, the supposed Indian came up to me, put two fingers on my shoulder, and said in a Norman accent that made me jump: 'Don't go too fast; sometimes people get drowned hem: If my home had spoken to me, I do not think I should have been more surprised. I looked at the man who spoke to me and whose face, lighted by the first rays of the moon, shone like a ball of copper. 'Who are you, then,' I said to him. 'French seems to be your language, and you look like an Indian.' He told me that he was a bois-bruIé, that is to say the son of a French Canadian and an Indian woman. I shall have frequent occasion to speak of this race of half-castes that covers all the frontiers of Canada and part of those of the United States. For the moment I only thought of the pleasure of speaking my mother tongue. Obeying the advice of the savage, my compatriot, I sat down in the bottom of the canoe and kept balance as well as might be. The horse went into the water and began to swim, while the French Canadian propelled the little boat with an oar, singing under his breath the while an old French song of which I only caught the first two lines:

'Between Paris and Saint Denis
There lived a girl.'

We reached the farther bank without mishap. The canoe went back at once to fetch my companion. All my life I shall remember the moment when it came up to the bank for the second time. The moon, which then was full, rose at that very moment above the prairie we had just crossed. Only half its orb showed above the horizon; one might have thought it a mysterious gate from which light flowed towards us from another sphere. Its rays reflected in the water, glinted close around me. The Indian canoe slid forward right along the line of the pale moonbeams; one saw no oars; one beard no sound of rowing; it glided on quickly and effortlessly, long, narrow, and black, like an alligator on the Mississippi that makes for the bank to seize its prey. As be crouched in the tip of the canoe with his bead on his knees, one could only see the shining tresses of Sagan Cuisco's hair. At the other end the French Canadian rowed in silence, while behind him the horse's plunging chest sent the water of the Saginaw splashing. The whole scene had something of savage grandeur in it, which then made and has since left an enduring impression on our souls. Landing on the bank, we hurried up to a house which we saw in the moonlight a hundred paces from the stream, where the French Canadian assured us we could find accommodation for the night. We did in fact get ourselves suitably fixed up, and probably sound sleep would have restored our strength if we had been able to get rid of the myriads of mosquitoes in which the house abounded. But that is something we never achieved. What is called a 'mosquito' in English and 'maringouin' by the French Canadians, is a little insect like to its French cousin in everything except size. It is generally bigger, and its sting is so strong and sharp that only woollen stuffs can protect one from its attacks. These little gnats are the scourge of the solitudes of America. Their presence is enough to make a long stay unbearable. For my part, I avow that I have never suffered torments like those they inflicted on me throughout the journey and particularly during our stay at Saginaw. By day they stopped us sketching, writing, or staying one moment in the same place; by night they circled in their thousands round us; any bit of your body that you left uncovered at once became their rendezvous. Woken by the pain of their stings we covered our heads in the sheets, but their needles went through them; thus hunted and harried by them, we got up and went to breathe the air outside until fatigue at last brought on troubled and interrupted sleep.

We got up very early in the morning, and the first sight that struck us as we left the house was that of our Indians rolled in their blankets near the door, asleep beside their dogs.

Then for the first time we saw in daylight the village of Saginaw, which we had come so far to seek.

A small cultivated plain, bounded on the south by a lovely, tranquil stream, on the east, west, and north by the forest, is up to now the whole territory of the city-to-be.

Near us was a house built in a style showing its owner's affluence. It was that in which we bad just passed the night. There appeared another house of the same sort at the other end of the clearing. Between the two, along the edge of the wood, were two or three log-houses half lost among the leaves. On the opposite bank of the stream the prairie stretched like a boundless ocean on a calm day. At that time a column of smoke was coming up from it and rising peacefully into the sky. Tracing its line back down to the ground, one could finally discern two or three wigwams whose conic forms and pointed tops lost themselves in the prairie grass.

A cart turned over, some oxen going back on their own 1) work, and same half-wild horses complete the picture.

Whichever way you looked, the eye would never find the spire of a Gothic belfry, a wooden cross marking the way, or the moss covered threshold of a presbytery. None of these venerable relies of old Christian civilisation. have been transported into the wilderness; nothing there awakens thoughts of the past or of the future. One does not even find sanctuaries sacred to those who are no more. Death has not had time to claim its dominion nor to define the graveyard's limit.

Here man seems furtively to enter upon life. There is no meeting around his cradle of several generations to express hopes that are often vain and give rein to premature joys to which the future gives the be. His name is not inscribed on the registers of the city. None of the touching solemnities of religion are mingled with the fam- solicitude. A woman's prayers, a few drops of water sprinkled on a baby's head by his father's hand, are the quiet opening for him of the doors of heaven.

The village of Saginaw is the last point inhabited by Europeans to the northwest of the huge peninsula of Michigan. One may regard it as an advance station, a sort of observation post, which the whites have established in the midst of the Indian tribes.

The revolutions of Europe and all the noisy bustle forever ringing in the well-policed part of the world hardly reach here at long intervals and ring like the echoes of a sound whose nature and origin the ear canfiot identify.

Perhaps an Indian incidentally recalls in the poetic manner natural to a man of the wilds some of the sad occurrences in the affairs of the world--a forgotten newspaper in a hunter's haversack, or just that vague rumour spread by unknown voices which hardly ever fails to let men know that something extraordinary is happening under the sun.

Once a year a ship going up the Saginaw comes to renew this broken link in the great European chain which already encircles the world. It brings the new settlement the varied products of industry and takes back in return the fruits of the soil.

Thirty people, men, women, old people, and children, were all that made up at the time of our visit that little society, a scarcely formed embryo, a growing seed entrusted to the wilds, which the wilds must fertilize.

Chance, interest or desire had brought together these thirty people in this narrow space. There was no other common link between them, and they were profoundly different. One found French Canadians there, some Americans, some Indians, and some half-castes.

Some philosophers have believed that human nature, everywhere the same, only varies according to the institutions and laws of different societies. That is one of the opinions to which the history of the world seems to give the he on every page. In history all nations, like individuals, show their own peculiar physiognomy. Their characteristic traits reproduce themselves through all the transformations that they undergo. Laws, morals, religions, alter; dominion and wealth change hands; external appearances vary; the dress is different; prejudices vanish or are replaced by others. Through all these diverse changes you always recognise the same people. Something inflexible shows through in spite of all man's adaptability.

The people inhabiting this little bit of cultivated plain belong to two races who for nearly a century have lived on American soil and obeyed the same laws. But there is nothing in common between them. They are English and French, just like those one finds on the banks of the Seine or the Thames.

Once inside that leafy hut you will find a man whose cordial welcome and open features at once indicate his taste for social pleasures and carefree attitude to life. At the first moment perhaps you will think him an Indian. Forced to live the life of a savage, he has freely adopted its habits, customs, and almost its manners. He wears moccasins, otterskin cap,- and woollen cloak. He is an unweary- hunter, sleeps in the open, and lives on wild honey and bison flesh. Nonetheless, this man has still remained a Frenchman, gay, enterprising, haughty, proud of his origin, passionate lover of military glory, vain rather than mercenary, a man of instinct following his first inclination rather than reason, preferring renown to money. To get to the wilds he seems to have broken all the ties that bind him to life; one does not find him with wife or children. This condition is unnatural to him, but be accepts it and everything else easily. Left to himself, his naturally stay-at- temper would reassert itself; no one has a stronger taste than he for the domestic hearth; no one delights more in the sight of the ancestral clock-tower; but be has been snatched away in spite of himself from his tranquil habits, his imagination has been inflamed by new sights, and lie has been transplanted under another sky; the man is the same, but he has suddenly felt an insatiable desire for violent emotions, vicissitude, and danger. The most civilised of Europeans has turned into a worshipper of the savage life. He prefers savannas to city streets and hunting to agriculture. He is taking chances with his life and lives without a care for the future.

The white men of France, say the Canadian Indians, are as good hunters as we. Like us they despise the cornforts of life and brave the dangers of death. God made them to dwell in a savage's hut and live in the wilds.

A few steps away from this man lives another European, who, having to face the same difficulties, has hard- himself against them.

This latter is cold, tenacious, and relentless in argument; he attaches himself to the ground and snatches from savage life all that can be got out of it. He is in continual contest against it and daily despoils it of some of its attributes. Bit by bit he carries into the wilds his laws, his habits, and his customs, and if he could, be would introduce everything down to the smallest refinements of advanced civilisation. The emigrant from the United States is only interested in victory for its results; he holds glory but a vain clamour, and thinks that man has only come into the world to gain affluence and the comforts of life. He is brave, nonetbeless, but brave by calculation, brave because he has found out that there are several things harder to bear than death. An adventurer surrounded by his family, but one who sets little store by intellectual pleasures and the charms of social life.

On the other side of the river, down in the reeds by the Saginaw, the Indian occasionally casts a stoic glance on the dwellings of his European brethren. Do not go imagining that he admires their works or envies their lot. For nearly three centuries by now the American savage has been in contest with the civilisation that presses on him and surrounds him, but he still has not learnt to know or esteem his enemy. In vain does generation follow generation in both races. Like two parallel rivers they have been flowing for three centuries towards a common abyss; a narrow space separates them, but their waters never mingle. It is not that the native of the New World is always lacking in natural aptitude, but his nature seems obstinately to repulse our ideas and our skills. Sleeping in his cloak in the smoke of his but, the Indian looks with mistrust at the European's comfortable house; he for his part prides himself on his poverty, and his heart swells and rejoices at the thought of his barbarian independence. He smiles bitterly as he sees us plaguing our lives to get useless wealth. What we call industry be calls shameful subjection. He compares the workman to an ox laboriously tracing out a furrow. What we call the comforts of life he calls chil- playthings or women's affectations. He envies us nothing but our weapons. When a man can find cover at night in a tent of leaves, when be can find enough to light a fire to keep off the mosquitoes in summer and cold in winter, when his dogs are good and the country full of game, what more can he ask from the Eternal Being?

On the other side of the Saginaw, near the European clearings and, so to speak, on the border of the old and new world, one finds a rustic but, more comfortable than me savage's wigwam but ruder than the civilised man I s house. That is the half-caste's dwelling. The first time that we presented ourselves at the door of such a half-civilised but, we were surprised to hear a gentle voice singing the Psalms of penitence to an Indian air. We stopped a moment to listen. The modulations of the sound were slow and profoundly melancholy; it was easy to recognise the plaintive harmony of all the songs of men of the wilds. We came in. The master was away. Seated cross-legged on a mat in the middle of the room, a young woman was making some moccasins; with one foot she rocked an infant whose copper colour and whose features made its double origin clear. This woman was dressed like one of our peasants except that her feet were bare and her hair fell freely on her shoulders. When she saw us, she fell silent with a sort of respectful fear. We asked her if she was French. 'No,' she answered smiling.--'English.--'Not that either,' she said; she lowered her eyes and added, 'I am only a savage.' Child of two races, brought up to use two language, nourished in diverse beliefs, and rocked in contrary prejudices, the half-caste forms an amalgam as inexplicable to others as to himself. What his rude mind takes in of the sights of this world present themselves as something like an inextricable chaos from which his spirit knows no escape. Proud of his European origin, he scorns the wilds, and yet be loves the freedom that prevails there. He admires civilisation but cannot completely submit to its dominion. His tastes are in contradiction with his ideas, and his views with his habits. Not knowing bow to find his way by his uncertain lights, his soul is the painful battleground of all the arguments of universal doubt. He adopts contradictory customs; he prays at two altars; he believes in the Redeemer of the world and in the mountebank's amulets; and lie reaches the end of his life without ever being able to sort out the difficult problem of his existence.

So in this comer of the earth unknown to the world, God's hand had already sown the seeds of diverse nations; here there are already. several different races, several distinct peoples facing one another.

Several exiled members of the great human family have met together in the immensity of the forests, and their needs are all alike; they have to fight against the beasts of the forest, hunger, and hard weather. There are scarcely thirty of them in the nridst of the wilds where everything resists their efforts, but they cast only looks of hatred and suspicion on one another. Colour of skin, poverty or affluence, ignorance or enlightenment have already built up indestructible classifications between them; national prejudices, and prejudices of education and birth divide and isolate them.

Where could one find a more complete picture of the wretchedness of our nature in a narrower frame? But there is yet one feature still unmentioned.

The deep lines that birth and opinion have ruled between these men by no means end with life, but stretch out beyond the tomb. Six religions or different sects divide the faith of this nascent society.

Catholicism, with its formidable immobility, its absolute dogmas, its terrible anathemas and immense rewards; the religious anarchy of the Reformation; and ancient paganism are all represented. Already the one Eternal Being, who made all men in his image, is worshipped in six different ways. Disputes rage about the heaven that every one claims as his exclusive heritage. Beyond that even, in the midst of the wretchedness of solitude and the troubles of the present, human imagination wears itself out inventing inexpressible sorrows for the future. The Lutheran condemns the Calvinist to eternal fire, the Calvinist the Unitarian, and the Catholic embraces them all in a common condemnation.

The Indian, more tolerant in his rude faith, does not go beyond exiling his European brother from the happy hunting grounds he reserves for himself. For him, faithful to the confused traditions bequeathed by his fathers, there is an easy consolation for the ills of this life, and he dies peacefully, dreaming of the evergreen forests which the pioneer's axe will never bring down, where deer and beaver will come to be shot through the numberless days of eternity.

After lunch we went to see the richest landowner in the village, Mr. Williams. We found him in his shop busy selling Indians a quantity of objects of little value, such as knives, glass necklaces, and ear-rings. It was a shame to see how these unfortunates were treated by their civi- European brethren. Moreover, everyone we saw was loud in praise of the savages. They were good, inoffensive, a thousand times less inclined to theft than the white men. It was only a pity that they were beginning to learn about the value of things. And why that, if you please? Because the profits made by trading with them were daily becoming less considerable. Do you appreciate there the superiority of the civilised man? The Indian in his rude simplicity would have said that he was finding it daily more difficult to cheat his neigbbour. But the white man discovers in the refinements of language a happy nuance that expresses the fact but bides the shame.

Coming back from Mr. Williams', it occurred to us to go some way up the Saginaw to shoot the wild duck on its banks. While we were so engaged, a canoe came out from the reeds in the river and some Indians came to meet us to look at my rifle, which they bad seen in the distance. I have always noticed that that weapon, which, however, has nothing unusual about it, wins me altogether special consideration from the savages. A rifle that could kill two men in one second and be fired in fog was in their view a wonder beyond value, a priceless masterpiece. Those who came up to us as usual expressed great admiration. They asked where my rifle came from. Our young guide said that it had been made on the other side of the great water, in the land of the fathers of the French Canadians, a circumstance which, as you will believe, did not make it less precious in their eyes. But they pointed out that as the sights were not placed in the middle of each barrel, it was difficult to be sure of your shot, a criticism to which I admit I could not find an answer.

When evening came on we got into the canoe again, and trusting to the experience we bad gained in the morn- we went out alone to go up a branch of the Saginaw of which we had only had a glimpse before.

The sky was cloudless and the air pure and still. The river waters flowed through an immense forest, but so slowly that it would have been almost impossible to say in which direction the current was running. We bad always found that to get a true idea of the forests of me New World one must follow up one of the streams that wander beneath their shade. The rivers are like main roads by means of which Providence has been at pains, since the beginning of the world, to open up the wilds and make them accessible to man. When one forces a way through the woods, one's view is generally very limited. Besides, the very path on which you walk is the work of man. But the rivers are roads that keep no marks of tracks, and their banks freely show all the great and strange sights that vigorous vegetation left to itself can provide. The wilds were there surely just the same as when our first fathers saw them six thousand years ago, a flowering solitude, delightful and scented, a magnificent dwelling, a living palace built for man, but which its master bad not yet reached. The canoe glided without effort and without sound; the serenity of universal calm reigned around us. We, too, soon felt the tender influence of such a sight. We talked less and less and soon found that we only put our thoughts into whispers. Finally we fell silent, and working the oars simultaneously, both of us fell into a tranquil reverie full of inexpressible charm.

Why is it that human language that finds words for every sorrow meets an invincible obstacle in trying to make the most gentle and natural emotions of the human heart understood? Who will ever paint a true picture of those rare moments in life when physical well-being prepares the way for calm of soul, and the universe seems before your eyes to have reached a perfect equilibrium; then the soul, half asleep, hovers between the present and the future, between the real and the possible, while with natural beauty all around and the air tranquil and mild, at peace with himself in the midst of universal peace, man listens to the even beating of his arteries that seems to him to mark the passage of time flowing drop by drop through eternity. Many men perhaps have seen long years of existence pile up without once experiencing anything like what we have just described. They will not understand us. But there are some, we are sure, who will find in their memory and at the bottom of their heart something that gives colour to the picture that we paint, and as they read, will feel the memory awakening of some fugitive hours which neither time nor the demanding cares of life have been able to eff ace.

We were woken from our reverie by a gun-shot that suddenly echoed through the woods. The sound at first seemed to roll crashing along both banks of the river; then it rumbled into the distance until it was entirely lost in the depths of the forest. It might have been the long, fearsome war cry of civilisation on the march.

One evening in Sicily we happened to get lost in a vast marsh that now occupies the place where once was the city of Himera; the sight of that once famous city turned back to savage wilds made a great and deep impression on us. Never have we seen beneath our feet more magnificent witness to the instability of human things and the wretchedness of our nature. Here too it was indeed a solitude, but imagination, instead of going backwards to try and get back into the past, went rushing on ahead and got lost in an immense future. It struck us as a peculiar privilege of fate that we who had been able to look on the ruins of perished empires and to walk through wilds of human making, that we, children of an ancient people, should be brought to witness one of the scenes of the primitive world and to see the still empty cradle of a great nation. Here it is not a question of the more or less doubtful anticipations of the wise. The facts are as certain as if they had already occurred. In but few years these im- forests will have fallen. The noise of civilisation and of industry will break the silence of the Saginaw. Its echo will be silent. Embankments will imprison its sides, and is waters, which. today Row unknown and quiet through nameless wilds, will be thrown back in their flow by the prows of ships. Fifty leagues still separate this solitude from the great European settlements, and we are perhaps the last travellers who will have been allowe to see it in its primitive splendour, so great is the force that drives the white race to the complete conquest of the New World.

It is this consciousness of destruction, this arriére-pensée of quick and inevitable change, that gives, we feel, so peculiar a character and such a touching beauty to the solitudes of America. One sees them with a melancholy pleasure; one is in some sort of a hurry to admire them. Thoughts of the savage, natural grandeur that is going to come to an end become mingled with splendid anticipations of the triumphant march of civilisation. One feels proud to be a man, and yet a the same time one ex- I cannot say what bitter regret at the power that God has granted us over nature. One's soul is shaken by contradictory thoughts and feelings, but all the impressions it receives are great and leave a deep mark.

We wanted to leave Saginaw on the next day, July 27, but as one of our horses had been badly rubbed by its saddle, we decided to wait one day more. For want of any other way to pass the time, we went shooting along the meadows that fringe the Saginaw above the clearings. These meadows are not at all marshy, as one might have supposed. They are more or less large open spaces that the wood does not cover although the soil is excellent. The grass there is tough and three or four feet high. We found but little game and came back early. The heat was stifling as if before a storm, and the mosquitoes were even more troublesome than usual. We could not move without a cloud of these insects, on whom we had to make perpetual war. Bad luck to any one who had to stop. That was to give oneself over defenceless to a pitiless foe. Once I remember having to keep moving while I was loading my rifle, so difficult was it to stay still for a moment.

As we were crossing the meadow on our return, we noticed that the French Canadian who acted as our guide kept to a narrow, trodden path and was very careful to look at the ground before putting his foot down. 'Why are you so careful?' I asked him. 'Are you afraid of getting wet?'--'No,' be answered. 'But I have got the babit when I am walking through the meadows of looking where I put my feet so as not to tread on a rattlesnake.'- ' What the devil,' I answered, jumping on to the path. 'Are there rattlesnakes bere?'--'Yes indeed: our Norman American answered with imperturbable sang-froid. 'The place is full of them! I reproached him then for not having told us sooner. He made out that as we were wearing good boots and a rattlesnake never bites above the ankle, be had not felt that we were running great danger.

I asked him if a rattlesnake bite was mortal. He replied that one always died in less than twenty-four hours unless one turned to the Indians for help. They knew of a remedy which, if given in time, be said, saved the victim.

However that may be, for the rest of the way we imitated our guide and looked as he did to our feet.

The night that followed this burning day was one of the worst I have passed in my life. The mosquitoes had become so troublesome that, though worn out with fatigue, I could not shut my eyes. Towards midnight the long threatened storm finally broke. With no more hope of getting any sleep, I got up and opened our hut door so as at least to breathe the fresh night air. The rain had not started yet, and the air seemed calm, but the forest shook already and was filled with deep groans and lingering wails. Now and again a lightning flash illuminated the sky. The tranquil flow of the Saginaw, the little clearing that edges its banks, the roofs of five or six huts, and the leafy fence that surrounded us appeared then for an instant like an evocation of the future. Then all was in the deepest darkness and the fearsome voice of the wilds was heard again.

While I stood, struck by this great spectacle, I heard a sigh at my side, and in the flash of the lightning I saw an Indian leaning as I was doing against the wall of our dwelling. No doubt the storm bad broken his sleep, for it was a fixed and troubled gaze that be cast around the scene.

Was this man afraid of the thunder? Or did he see in the clash of the elements something beyond a passing convulsion of nature? Had the fugitive images of civilisa- which rose unbidden in the midst of the tumult of the wilds a prophetic meaning for him? bid these groans of the forest that seemed to be fighting an unequal battle strike his ear as a secret warning of God, a solemn revelation of the final fate reserved for the savage races? I could not say. But his agitated lips seemed to be murmuring prayers, and all his features were stamped by superstitious terror.

At five o'clock in me morning we thought about leaving All the Indians in the neigbbourbood of Saginaw had disappeared. They had gone to receive the presents that the English give them every yea, and the Europeans none busy harvesting. So we had to make up our minds to get back through the forest without a guide. The undertaking was not as difficult as one might have supposed. Generally speaking, there is only one path in these vast solitudes, and it is only a question of not losing track of it to reach the end of one's journey.

So then, at five o'clock in the morning we crossed the Saginaw again; our hosts said good-bye to us and gave us their last words of advice. Then, turning our horses' heads, we found ourselves alone in the forest. I must admit that it was not without apprehension that we began to pene- its humid depths. This same forest that surrounded us then stretched behind us to the Pole and to the Pacific Ocean. Only one inhabited point separated us from the endless wilds and we were going to leave that. But such thoughts only served to make us press our horses on, and at the end of three hours we reached an abandoned wigwam and came to the solitary banks of the Cass River. A turf covered point projecting above the river in the shade of great trees served us as a table, and we sat down to luncheon with a view of the river whose waters, clear as crystal, snaked through the wood.

Going out of the wigwam on the Cass River, we came upon several paths. We had been told which to take, but it is easy to forget some points or not to make oneself clearly understood in such explanations. That is what we discovered on that day. They had told us about two ways; there were three. It is true that of these three ways there were two which joined up again farther on, as we later found out, but we didn't know that then, and great was our distress.

When we had well looked and well argued, we did what almost all great men do and acted more or less on chance. We got across the stream as best we could by a ford and forced our way quickly towards the South-West. More than once the path seemed ready to disappear amid the undergrowth; in other places the way seemed so little frequented that we could scarcely believe that it led to anything more than some abandoned wigwam. Our compass, it is true, showed us that we were always walking in the right direction. Nonetheless, we were not completely reassured until we found the place where we bad had dinner three days before. A gigantic pine whose trunk, torn by the wind, we had admired made us recognise it. Nonetheless, we went on our way as quickly as before, for the sun was beginning to go down. Soon we came to a glade such as generally comes before the clearings, and just as night was beginning to surprise us, we saw the Flint River. Half an hour later, we reached our hoses door. This time the bear greeted us as old friends and only got on to its hind legs to show its delight at our happy return.

Throughout the whole of that day we had not met a single human face. The animals too had disappeared; no doubt they had retreated under the foliage to escape the heat of the day. Only at long intervals did we notice, on the bare top of some dead tree, a sparrow hawk, motionless, on one foot, and sleeping peacefully in the rays of the sun, seeWed sculptured out of the very wood on which it rested.

It was in the midst of that profound solitude that we suddenly thought of the Revolution of 1830, whose first anniversary had just arrived. I cannot describe the impact with which memories of July 29 took possession of our minds. The cries and smoke of battle, the roar of guns, the rattle of rifles, the even more horrible ringing of the tocsin-that whole day with its delirious atmosphere, seemed suddenly to rise out of the past and to stand before me like a living picture. This was only. a sudden hallucination, a passing dream. When I raised my head and looked around me, the apparition had already vanished; but never had the silence of the forest seemed so icy, the shadows so sombre, the solitude so absolute.