be soothing and taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo.  The Indian’s intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the greatest independence of each.  If he is somewhat of a stranger in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar.  There is something vulgar and foul in the latter’s closeness to his mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former’s distance.  In civilization, as in a southern latitude, man degenerates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern tribes,

     “Some nation yet shut in
        With hills of ice.”

There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of nature than our poets have sung.  It is only white man’s poetry.  Homer and Ossian even can never revive in London or Boston.  And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by the mere tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted fragrance and flavor of these wild fruits.  If we could listen but for an instant to the chant of the Indian muse, we should understand why he will not exchange his savageness for civilization.  Nations are not whimsical.  Steel and blankets are strong temptations; but the Indian does well to continue Indian.

After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the poets, I have been out early on a foggy morning, and heard the cry of an owl in a neighboring wood as from a nature behind the common, unexplored by science or by literature.  None of the feathered race has yet realized my youthful conceptions of the woodland depths.  I had seen the red Election-bird brought from their recesses on my comrades’ string, and fancied that their plumage would assume stranger and more dazzling colors, like the tints of evening, in proportion as I advanced farther into the darkness and solitude of the forest.  Still less have I seen such strong and wilderness tints on any poet’s string.

These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented.  We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.  According to Gower,—­

     “And Iadahel, as saith the boke,
       Firste made nette, and fishes toke. 
     Of huntyng eke he fond the chace,
     Whiche nowe is knowe in many place;
     A tent of clothe, with corde and stake,
     He sette up first, and did it make.”

Also, Lydgate says:—­

“Jason first sayled, in story it is tolde,
Toward Colchos, to wynne the flees of golde,
Ceres the Goddess fond first the tilthe of londe;
* * * * *
Also, Aristeus fonde first the usage
Of mylke, and cruddis, and of honey swote;
Peryodes, for grete avauntage,
From flyntes smote fuyre, daryng in the roote.”