The door of the wagon had been closed against the tempest, which was
roaring and blustering with prodigious fury and commotion, and beating
violently against our shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless
people for its lawful prey, while we, caring little for the
displeasure of the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now
an attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice, uttering some
strange, unintelligible gibberish, which my companions mistook for
Greek, and I suspected to be thieves' Latin. However, the showman
stepped forward, and gave admittance to a figure which made me
imagine; either that our wagon had rolled back two hundred years into
past ages, or that the forest and its old inhabitants had sprung up
around us by enchantment.

It was a red Indian, armed with his bow and arrow. His dress was a
sort of cap, adorned with a single feather of some wild bird, and a
frock of blue cotton, girded tight about him; on his breast, like
orders of knighthood, hung a crescent and a circle, and other
ornaments of silver; while a small crucifix betokened that our Father
the Pope had interposed between the Indian and the Great Spirit, whom
he had worshipped in his simplicity. This son of the wilderness, and
pilgrim of the storm, took his place silently in the midst of us.
When the first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured him to be one
of the Penobscot tribe, parties of which I had often seen, in their
summer excursions down our Eastern rivers. There they paddle their
birch canoes among the coasting schooners, and build their wigwam
beside some roaring milldam, and drive a little trade in basket-work
where their fathers hunted deer. Our new visitor was probably
wandering through the country towards Boston, subsisting on the
careless charity of the people, while he turned his archery to