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hatchet or knife, after having vented against their unhappy captives the most outrageous insults: " W h y are we unable," howl these furies, "to devour the heart of thy children, and bathe in the blood of thy nation!" At the death of a chief, or other warrior, renowned for his bravery, his wives, children, and relatives cut off their hair; this is a great mourning with the savages. The loss of a parent would seem but little felt, if it only caused his family to shed tears; it must be deplored with blood; and the deeper the incisions, the more sincere is the affection for the deceased. "An overwhelming sorrow," they say, "cannot be vented unless through large wounds." I know not how to reconcile these sentiments respecting the dead with their conduct towards the living. Would you believe that these men, so inconsolable in their mourning, abandon, without pity, to the ferocious beasts of the desert, the old men, the sick, and all those whose existence would be a burden to them? The funeral of a Snake warrior is always performed by the destruction of whatever he possessed; nothing, it seems, should survive him but the recollection of his exploits. After piling up in his hut all the articles he made use of, they cut away the props of the cabin, and set the whole on fire. The Youts, who form a separate people, although they belong to the tribe of the Soshonees, throw the body of the deceased upon the funeral pile, together with a hecatomb of his best horses. The moment that the smoke rises in thick clouds, they think that the soul of the savage is flying towards the region of spirits, borne by the manes of his faithful coursers; and, in order to quicken their flight, they, all together, raise up frightful yells. But in general, instead of burning the body, they fasten it upon his favorite charger as on a day of battle; the animal is then led to the edge of a neighboring river the warriors are drawn up in a semi-circular form in order to prevent his escape; and then with a shower of arrows and a universal hurrah, they force him to plunge into the current which is to engulf him. They next, with redoubled shouts, recommend him to transport his master without delay to the land of spirits. The Sampieetches are the next neighbors of the Snakes. There is not, perhaps, in the whole world, a people in a deeper state of wretchedness and corruption; the French commonly designated them "the people deserving of pity," and this appellation is most appropriate. Their lands are uncultivated heaths; their habitations are holes in the rocks, or the natural crevices of the ground, and their only arms, arrows and sharp-pointed sticks. Two, three, or at most four of them may be seen in company,
