vouch for these and similar events occurring as foretold. I cannot
pretend to explain them, but I know that our people possessed
remarkable powers of concentration and abstraction, and I sometimes
fancy that such nearness to nature as I have described keeps the
spirit sensitive to impressions not commonly felt, and in touch
with the unseen powers. Some of us seemed to have a peculiar
intuition for the locality of a grave, which they explained by
saying that they had received a communication from the
spirit of the departed. My own grandmother was one of these, and
as far back as I can remember, when camping in a strange country,
my brother and I would search for and find human bones at the spot
she had indicated to us as an ancient burial-place or the spot
where a lone warrior had fallen. Of course, the outward signs
of burial had been long since obliterated.

The Scotch would certainly have declared that she had the
"second sight," for she had other remarkable premonitions or
intuitions within my own recollection. I have heard her speak of
a peculiar sensation in the breast, by which, as she said,
she was advised of anything of importance concerning her absent
children. Other native women have claimed a similar monitor, but
I never heard of one who could interpret it with such accuracy. We
were once camping on Lake Manitoba when we received news that my
uncle and his family had been murdered several weeks before, at
a fort some two hundred miles distant. While all our clan were
wailing and mourning their loss, my grandmother calmly bade them
cease, saying that her son was approaching, and that they would see
him shortly. Although we had no other reason to doubt the
ill tidings, it is a fact that my uncle came into camp two days
after his reported death.