we could do it. Whereupon a man-of-war to fire broadsides into her was
suggested, etc. An Indian tells such a story as if he thought it
deserved to have a good deal said about it, only he has not got it to
say; and so he makes up for the deficiency by a drawling tone,
long-windedness, and a dumb wonder which he hopes will be contagious."

This concluding criticism is indeed singularly characteristic of Mr.
Thoreau's own nasal stories about Nature, but it is as utterly untrue
as ridiculous when applied to any Indian storytelling to which I have
ever listened, and I have known the near relatives of the Indians of
whom he speaks, and heard many of them tell their tales. This writer
passed months in Maine, choosing Penobscot guides expressly to study
them, to read Indian feelings and get at Indian secrets, and this
account of Glooskap, whose name he forgets, is a fair specimen of what
he learned. Yet he could in the same book write as follows: "The
Anglo-American can indeed cut down and grub up all this waving forest,
And make a stump and vote for Buchanan on its ruins; but he cannot
Converse with the spirit of the tree he fells, he cannot read the
poetry and mythology which retires as he advances."

If Mr. Thoreau had known the Indian legend of the spirit of the fallen
tree--and his guide knew it well--he might have been credited with
speaking wisely of the poetry and _mythology_ which he ridicules
the poor rural Yankees for not possessing.

Such a writer can, indeed, peep and botanize on the grave of Mother
Nature, but never evoke _her_ spirit.

The moving the island is evidently of Eskimo origin, since Crantz
(_History of Greenland_) heard nearly the same story of some