Chap. X. FRANKLIN AND RICHARDSON'S JOURNEY. 351 



when he attained the age of manhood, chose him a wife from 

 the tribe. The old man kept his vow in never taking a se- 

 cond wife himself, but he delighted in tending his son's 

 children, and when his daughter-in-law used to interfere, 

 saying that it was not the occupation of a man, he was wont 

 to reply, that he had promised to the great Master of Life, 

 if his child was spared, never to be proud, like the other 

 Indians. He used to mention, too, as a certain proof of the 

 approbation of Providence, that although he was always 

 obliged to carry his child on his back while hunting, yet 

 that it never roused a moose by its cries, being always par- 

 ticularly still at those times. Our informant (Mr. AVentzel) 

 added, that he had often seen this Indian in his old age, and 

 that his left breast, even then, retained the unusual size it 

 had acquired in his occupation of nurse." — pp. 157, 158. 



Singular as this case may appear, Dr. Richardson 

 is quite correct in stating that there are others on 

 record, in which the same effects precisely were pro- 

 duced, and among which is that recorded by the 

 Baron Von Humboldt in his South American travels, 

 and which some of the physiologists of that day pro- 

 nounced to be impossible, while they were advanc- 

 ing and defending other stories not less miraculous. 

 It is not safe in this age of wonderful discoveries to 

 pronounce dogmatically what is and what is not 

 possible. Physiologists, and physicians, and sur- 

 geons, may say, as some have said, that man has 

 not been gifted as woman is, with lacteous nutri- 

 ment; but common sense may lead to the pre- 

 sumption that both, being constituted with the same 

 materials, and supplied with similar glands, may, 

 by some extraordinary circumstance — " the force 



