I7Wj. HOUND THE WORLD. 107 



earnestly the cause, but instead of answering she 

 took from under her garment a shark's tooth, and 

 struck it six or seven times into her head with great 

 force ; a profusion of blood followed, and she talked 

 loud, but in a most melancholy tone, for some mi- 

 nutes, without at all regarding his enquiries, which 

 he repeated with still more impatience and concern, 

 while the other Indians, to his great surprise, talked 

 and laughed, without taking the least notice of her 

 distress. But her own behaviour was still more ex- 

 traordinary. As soon as the bleeding was over, she 

 looked up with a smile, and began to collect some 

 small pieces of cloth, which during her bleeding she 

 had thrown down to catch the blood ; as soon as she 

 had picked them all up, she carried them out of the 

 tent, and threw them into the sea, carefully dispers- 

 ing them abroad, as if she wished to prevent the sight 

 of them from reviving the remembrance of w^hat she 

 had done. She then plunged into the river, and after 

 having washed her whole body returned to the tents 

 with the same gaiety and cheerfulness as if nothing 

 had happened. 



It is not, indeed, strange, that the sorrows of these 

 artless people should be transient, any more than that 

 their passions should be suddenly and strongly ex- 

 pressed : what they feel they have never been taught 

 either to disguise or suppress, and having no habits 

 of thinking which perpetually recall the past, and 

 anticipate the future, they are affected by all the 

 changes of the passing hour, and reflect the colour 

 of the time, however frequently it may vary : they 

 have no project which is to be pursued from day to 

 day, the subject of unremitted anxiety and solicitude, 

 that first rushes into the mind when they awake in 

 the morning, and is last dismissed when they sleep 

 at the night. Yet if we admit that they are upon 

 the whole happier than we, we must admit that the 

 child is happier than the man, and that we are losers 



