dark ages, or even still-if all tales are true-among some ignorant wretches. I was told by Governor Sir James Douglas of a case in which a medicine-man among the Takalis, in British Columbia, wished to compass the destruction of a family, by burying certain animals in a box, each animal having a name attached to it corresponding to that of the person intended to be destroyed; it was supposed that as the animals gradually died, the persons whose representatives they were would also pine away and die. The medieval custom of putting waxen images before the fire with a similar intent will readily recur to the mind. Philip le Bel accused his minister, Marigny, of employing magicians to attempt the king's life, by moulding waxen images of him and running them through with pins. In the eleventh century, the Jews were accused of having murdered a bishop in this way; they made a waxen image of him, had it baptised, and then burnt it. In the time of Catherine de Medicis the idea was very prevalent that a person could be tortured by sticking pins into a waxen image of him. I have known of a similar superstition being acted upon near Moffatt, in Scotland. Again, only lately I heard of a very similar instance in Inverness-shire. A corp crè, or criadh, was discovered in a stream in that county; the body was of clay, into which were stuck the nails of human beings, birds' claws, bones, pins, &c. It was partly covered by, and tied in, a black cotton apron, and had an old beaver hat on its head. For the information of those not learned in Highland superstition, it may be mentioned that a corp crè means an effigy or representation in clay of a person who has made himself so obnoxious to another as to render it desirable that he should not live. When the corp is made, it is placed in a river or stream, and as the waters gradually wear away the clay till nothing is left, so, it is supposed, wastes the life of the person whose death is desired. Numerous similar customs might be cited as existing at the present day among various barbarous or savage peoples. I may only mention that, for instance, it has lately come to my knowledge that on the Assam frontier a superstition prevails almost identical with that described. Thus we see that in all ages the rude, uncultivated mind is the same, whether among savages or civilised races.

Curiously enough, the Takali superstition had its exact counterpart in England not long ago. It was the custom from very early times to name the lions in the Tower of London after the reigning monarchs, and it was supposed that the sovereign's fate was in a manner bound up with that of the royal beast. Thus Lord Chesterfield, as quoted by Earl Stanhope, in his "History of England," remarks, in reference to a serious illness from which George II., just two years previous to his death, recovered, that "it was generally thought that His Majesty would have died, for a very good reason-for the oldest lion in the Tower, much about the king's age, died a fortnight ago." The idea is also humorously alluded to by Addison, in the Freeholder, where he represents the Jacobite squire as anxiously inquiring whether none of the lions had fallen sick when (in 1715) Perth was taken by the Royalists, and the Pretender fled!

The Indians also attribute illness to the malevolence of evil-disposed persons—a superstition which has its counterpart in every country. The person who may have bewitched the ill-fated may be a slave, a stranger who has arrived in the camp, or (more likely) a person with whom the sick or dead man may have quarrelled. In such a case, the death of the person is often the only way the bereaved relatives can be consoled. When an Indian quarrels with another, he will say, "You will die soon." As likely as not the threatened person, frightened at the threat,

will fall sick or die, in which case the dead man's relatives may take the first opportunity of shooting his "bewitcher."

I have already spoken about the birds of ill-omen, and the superstitions connected with "Minerva's bird." Owing to the connection of birds with the dead, nearly all of them are viewed with superstition, and it is said that before the Indians got so familiar with the whites, as they are just now in some places, they did not use them as articles of food. A curious notion prevails among many of the coast Indians, that the grouse are converted into seagulls in the winter-originating, I suppose, from the former birds being less seen during the winter season, and rice versa. "The raven that croaked on Duncan's battlements" is not more a bird of illomen that the bird (perhaps of a different species) which sits "cawing" on the salmon-drying frames of an Indian coast village. The old Norsemen called it the "gallows-swan," and nearly every nation has superstitions connected with it. Country folks in England consider it quite a weather-prophet.* Among the Clingats a general name for all the northern tribes-the crow is credited with the peopling of the world, and was once white, but became black through the perfidy of an inhospitable individual named Kanook, who confined it in a smoky hut. After the world was destroyed by a flood, the few survivors re-peopled it by throwing stones behind them, after the manner of Deucalion and Pyrrha, in the Roman mythology. How much of this is aboriginal and how much imported is hardly worth inquiring.†

Old Indians will often inform you by the croaking of the raven whether there is a likelihood of rain or no. Old men will be pointed out to you, who are high in honour, because they have warded off ruin and disaster to the tribe by listening to the raven's talk. There is an old, dismantled village on Village Point, Hornby's Island, which was once the scene of such a prophecy. All was going on about the village as usual, when an old seer predicted, from the croaking of the raven, that on a certain day the Nuchultaws would come south and attack their village. Now the Comoucs (to whom the village belonged) had been at peace with the Nuchultaws for several months, and accordingly everybody laughed at the foreteller of evil tidings. (Night, I may mention, is the usual time of attack, but on this occasion the disaster was to happen during daylight.) Nevertheless, every morning he repeated his warning, cautioning them to draw their canoes within the pickets, then usually surrounding most villages, at least on their seaward aspect, and get prepared. Still they jeered him, but his warnings were so persistently repeated" he had heard the raven say it"-that at the eleventh hour they commenced preparations, and went south and asked the help of their friends, the Nanaimos, who sent a chosen band of warriors to be stationed in the woods in ambush, so as to surprise the enemy in the rear. Morning came, and the day was wearing away, and yet there were no signs of the enemy. The old man still repeated his prophecy, but instead of being listened to, he was about

In the Highlands of Scotland, the raven's feathers under the head of a dying person were supposed to prolong the patient's life. This is, probably, of a similar character with the superstition connected with feathers used in many Indian ceremonies, and at death. The Highlanders have also an adage referring to the raven superstition-“ Nae gude comes o' shootin' black craws." And

"Is it not ominous in all countries

When crows and ravens croak upon trees?"-Hudibras, Part II., canto iii.

The reader who is interested in the matter, will find the whole story in Mr. Macfie's book on British Columbia, p. 452.

to run the chance of being rather badly used, as a false alarmist, when those on the look-out reported several war-canoes in sight, which increased in number till quite a fleet was on the horizon. Closely they paddled together, until they were in sight of the village, when, becoming alarmed at the absence of the canoes drawn up on the beach, and seeing no women gathering shell-fish, or children playing about as usual, they halted for a council, the result of which was that, suspecting mischief, they sailed again northward.

It was subsequently discovered that this attack had long been determined on, and, but for the old man's warning, it might have resulted disastrously to the Comoucs. It may, however, be shrewdly suspected that the old seer had received some private information of the intended attack, for among Indian, as among other soothsayers, one of their maxims is, "Never prophesy unless you know."* Figures of owls, it may be remarked, are frequently seen carved on the pillars of lodges, or painted on the boards. The ruins of the village in question, when visited by me in August, 1864, had many such representations. All which calls to mind Philip von Martius's remark, regarding a scene of mummery and superstition similar to some recorded in the preceding pages, that all this is only a remnant of that once higher and grander worship of Nature found among these now degenerate and degraded races, and that through this pagan darkness we see glimmering a light which tells us

"There are longings, yearnings, strivings

For the good they comprehend not;

That the feeble hands, and helpless,

Groping blindly in the darkness,

Touch God's right hand in that darkness."

"Tell me the songs of a nation, and I will tell you their history," is an old truism. It is equally true regarding a savage race, that their traditions are their songs, their history, their metaphysics. Without a written history, historical events soon get into the region of myths, and therefore we find few events which can be distinctly classed as history. Many of their traditions are myths of observation-such as the natural features which may have struck a people as peculiar, and accordingly they have set their imagination to work to devise an explanation. Another set of traditions have a deeper origin, and may be classed as worldwide, and as pointing to the Asiatic origin of the Indians. All of them are very imaginative, and may serve to "point a moral" while "adorning a tale" in an Indian wigwam. A few of them are local, but the greater number are found widely scattered, under different versions, among the Indian tribes, but in few cases is the disguise so deep as to conceal the original outline of the tale. These traditions and myths are so numerous that even was my knowledge sufficient, the space at my disposal would only admit of a few of the more characteristic being given in this place. Nowadays, as the young people affect to despise these idle tales, and only a few of the old people know them, they are dropping fast into oblivion, as the more ignorant class of the whites, who have opportunities of collecting them, look upon them as sc many foolish Indian stories, without being aware that they form some of the treasures of that unwrought mine of Indian mythology which, followed out in the same spirit of investigation

Restrained by this superstition about crows, like the Highlanders, they hesitate to kill these birds, though troublesome to them, but set a child to watch and drive them away from the fish-drying frames.