Such scenes I have often observed, and I have also witnessed the consequence, which is, that the outcast eventually commits suicide, another crime supposed to be practised only by reasoning creatures like ourselves.  I have seen horses, when tired of their prairie life, walk round and round large trees, as if to ascertain the degree of hardness required; they have then measured their distance, and darting with furious speed against it, fractured their skull, and thus got rid of life and oppression.

I remember a particular instance; it was at the settlement.  I was yet a boy, and during the hotter hours of the day, I used to take my books and go with one of the missionaries to study near a torrent, under the cool shade of a magnolia.¸

All the trees around us were filled with numerous republics of squirrels, scampering and jumping from branch to branch, and, forgetful of everything else, we would sometimes watch their sport for hours together.  Among them we had remarked one, who kept solitary between the stems of an absynth shrub, not ten yards from our usual station.  There he would lie motionless for hours basking in the sun, till some other squirrels would perceive him.  Then they would jump upon him, biting and scratching till they were tired, and the poor animal would offer no resistance, and only give way to his grief by plaintive cries.

At this sight, the good padre did not lose the opportunity to inculcate a lesson, and after he had finished speaking, he would strike his hands together to terrify the assailants.

“Yes,” observed I, using his own words, “it is nature.”

“Alas! no,” he would reply; “’tis too horrible to be nature; it is only one of the numerous evils generated from society.”  The padre was a great philosopher, and he was right.

One day, while we were watching this paria of a squirrel, we detected a young one slowly creeping through the adjoining shrubs; he had in his mouth a ripe fruit, a parcimon, if I remember right.  At every moment he would stop and look as if he were watched, just as if he feared detection.  At last he arrived near the paria, and deposited before him his offering to misery and old age.

We watched this spectacle with feelings which I could not describe; there was such a show of meek gratitude in the one and happiness in the other, just as if he enjoyed his good action.  They were, however, perceived by the other squirrels, who sprang by dozens upon them; the young one with two bounds escaped, the other submitted to his fate.  I rose, all the squirrels vanished except the victim; but that time, contrary to his habits, he left the shrub and slowly advanced to the bank of the river, and ascended a tree.  A minute afterwards we observed him at the very extremity of a branch projecting over the rapid waters, and we heard his plaintive shriek.  It was his farewell to life and misery; he leaped into the middle of the current, which in a moment carried him to the shallow water a little below.