So He Began
The Following Story, And As The Pipe Passed In Turn To Him, Reynal
Availed Himself Of These Interruptions To Translate What Had
Preceded.
But the old man accompanied his words with such admirable
pantomime that translation was hardly necessary.
He said that when he was very young, and had never yet seen a white
man, he and three or four of his companions were out on a beaver
hunt, and he crawled into a large beaver lodge, to examine what was
there. Sometimes he was creeping on his hands and knees, sometimes
he was obliged to swim, and sometimes to lie flat on his face and
drag himself along. In this way he crawled a great distance
underground. It was very dark, cold and close, so that at last he
was almost suffocated, and fell into a swoon. When he began to
recover, he could just distinguish the voices of his companions
outside, who had given him up for lost, and were singing his death
song. At first he could see nothing, but soon he discerned something
white before him, and at length plainly distinguished three people,
entirely white; one man and two women, sitting at the edge of a black
pool of water. He became alarmed and thought it high time to
retreat. Having succeeded, after great trouble, in reaching daylight
again, he went straight to the spot directly above the pool of water
where he had seen the three mysterious beings. Here he beat a hole
with his war club in the ground, and sat down to watch.
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