8 NATURAL HISTORY. 



The interminable and trackless woods of North America 

 develop tribes whose faculties are moulded to the exigencies 

 of their position. To their practised senses the tangled forests 

 are as clear as the highway ; the moss on the trees, the sun 

 by day, the stars by night, the rushing of the wind, or the 

 sounds of animal life, are as broad roads and legible signs to 

 them, where we should discover no means to escape from the 

 wilderness of trees. Dependent in a great measure on hunt- 

 ing for their subsistence, their keen eye marks the slightest 

 trace of the expected prey ; a drooping leaf, a twisted blade 

 of grass, a bent twig, a ripple in the stream, are all noticed 

 and all understood. Ever eagerly bent on the destruction of 

 inimical tribes, and deeming the number of" scalps" attached 

 to their dress, each designating a slain, enemy, as the best 

 mark of nobility, they learn to track an enemy by his foot- 

 steps with unexampled patience and untiring assiduity. No 

 bloodhound ever followed his prey with more certainty than 

 the American Indian when on his " war-path" tracks his re- 

 tiring enemies, and when near them his approach is silent as 

 the gliding of the serpent, his blow as deadly as its fangs. 



The Malay race, whose lot is thrown amid islands and 

 coasts, are as crafty and fierce on the waters as the American 

 Indians in their woods. Accustomed to the water from their 

 earliest infancy, able to swim before they can walk, making 

 playthings of waves that would dash an ordinary swimmer to 

 pieces against the rocks, their existence is almost entirely 

 passed on the water. As the American Indians are slayers 

 and robbers by land, so are the Malays murderers and pirates 

 by sea. They have been known to capture a ship in the 

 midst of a storm by swimming to it and climbing up the 

 cable, and many instances of their crafty exploits in ship- 

 taking are on record. For a full account of their ferocity, 

 cunning, and endurance, the reader is referred to Sir James 

 Brook's reports on the Borneo pirates. 



The Esquimaux, situated among ice and snow, where mer- 

 cury freezes in the open air and water becomes ice within a 

 yard of a blazing fire, pass an apparently inactive life. They 

 actually form the ice and snow into warm and comfortable 

 houses ; wrapped up in enormous fur garments that almost 

 ^e t-.e human form, they defy the intensity of the frost, 



