greatest honors being paid him) gets up, places himself in the midst of
the cabbin, and pronounces a speech of thanksgiving. He praises the
master of the feast, who has so well regaled him and all the company. He
compares him to a tree, whose large and strong roots afford nourishment
to a number of small shrubs; or to a salutary medicinal herb, found
accidentally by such as frequent the lakes in their canoes. Some I have
heard, who, in their winter-feasts, compared him to the turpentine-tree,
that never fails of yielding its sap and gummy distillation in all
seasons: others to those temperate and mild days, which are sometimes
seen in the midst of the severest winter. They employ a thousand
similies of this sort, which I omit. After this introduction, they
proceed to make honorable mention of the lineage from which the matter
of the feast is descended.

"How great (will the oldest of them say) art thou, through thy great,
great, great grand-father, whose memory is still recent, by tradition,
amongst us, for the plentiful huntings he used to make! There was
something of miraculous about him, when he assisted at the beating of
the woods for elks, or other beasts of the fur. His dexterity at
catching this game was not superior to our's; but there was some
unaccountable secret he particularly possessed in his manner of seizing
those creatures, by springing upon them, laying hold of their heads, and
transfixing them at the same time with his hunting-spear, though thrice
as strong and as nimble again as he was, and much more capable with
their legs only, than we with our rackets [a sort of buskined shoes made
purposely for the Indian travels over the snow], to make their way over
mountains of snow: he would nevertheless follow them, dart them, without
ever missing his aim, tire them out with his chace, bring them down, and
mortally wound them. Then he would regale us with their blood, skin
them, and deliver up the carcass to us to cut to pieces. But if thy