178 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



night played games like those of human war- 

 riors in the daytime, who were malicious and 

 might steal men and women, but who might 

 also bring to the Indians the vast herds whose 

 presence meant plenty and whose absence star- 

 vation. Almost everywhere the coyote ap- 

 peared as a sharp, tricky hero, in adventures 

 having to do with beasts and men and magic 

 things. He played the part of Br' Rabbit in 

 Uncle Remus. 



Now and then a ghost-tale would have in it 

 an element of horror. The northern Indians 

 dwell in or on the borders of the vast and mel- 

 ancholy boreal forests, where the winter-time al- 

 ways brings with it the threat of famine, where 

 any accident to the solitary wanderer may mean 

 his death, and may mean also that his body 

 will never be found. In the awful loneliness of 

 that forest there are stretches as wide as many 

 a kingdom of Europe to which for decades at a 

 time no man ever goes. In the summer there 

 is sunlit life in the forest; flowers bloom, birds 

 sing, and the wind sighs through the budding 

 branches. In the winter there is iron desola- 

 tion; the bitter blasts sweep from the north, 

 the driven ice dust sears the face, the snow lies 

 far above a tall man's height, in their icy beds 

 the rivers lie fixed like shining steel. It is 



