"You shall see the '_Dead men's feast_,'" said Logan. I followed him in
silence, till we reached the southern bank of the Ohio, not far from his
own residence. The tribe was seated in a beautiful and secluded _prairie_,
that just afforded a vista of the river through the cypress swamp between.
A number of men and women seemed busily engaged in the decoration of
others with belts, beads, and brilliant-coloured garments; and these
latter seemed passive or asleep. Logan laid down the load he carried in
his blanket, and unwrapped the burden that had so long attracted my
attention. "'Tis my grandsire!" said he: "he has only been two years
buried:--I have brought him far. Aid me to cleanse the brave old limbs and
skull from these worms, that his spirit may rejoice over the feast with
his red children. Haste! my father yonder is painted and dressed already."

* * * * *

Before I quitted Kentucky, I made a point of visiting the celebrated and
immense nitre caverns or catacombs of the limestone region. Here I found
the mummies of the pigmy race that once inhabited the gigantic valley of
the Mississippi, adorned with strings of shell-wampum and turkeys'
feathers--seated in death like the ancient Naso-menes, grinning at me with
their long _inhuman_ fore-teeth--and came out as wise as I went in.

* * * * *

"O," said the captain, "a burial in Canada is no trifle in winter. Just
before you arrived, our drummer died, and we mustered spades, picks, and
shovels, to dig a grave for him; but the ground was one rock every where,
and after trying twenty places we found--that we had spoiled our tools. It
took the armourer next day to steel them all. The third day we got down