CONTACT WITH A PRIMITIVE FOLK 67 



visible in crossing a narrow roadway. The boy shot the first to 

 appear, placed the bullet in the small space between the base of 

 the wings and the top of the thighs where it needs to be placed 

 so that the wounded animal can neither run nor fly ; the distance 

 was paced by the master of the hunt and determined to be two 

 hundred and eight yards. It was not a fluke, for the fellow did 

 much such shooting. He had that curious organic perfection 

 which alone makes such deeds possible. 



Because I came to know these countrymen and acquired that 

 habit of dealing with the wilderness, I was often called on by my 

 elders to take charge of the search for the " corners" of land held 

 under the ancient titles when the only record was made in some 

 such phrase as " beginning at a white oak by two sugar trees and 

 a poplar on the upper waters of ten mile creek, thence running 

 north-easterly 1600 poles to a red oak," etc. As in many cases 

 it had been two or three score years since these corners were 

 established, the axe-marks in the "corner" and "witness" trees 

 were often extremely obscure, sometimes completely grown 

 over; not infrequently one or more of the trees had fallen and 

 gone to decay. On one occasion a land suit turned on the ques- 

 tion of establishing a corner marked more than seventy years 

 before. The only person who had ever seen it was a man nearly 

 ninety years of age, who had been with the surveying party that 

 first "ran out" the trail. In his dotage, the old fellow had only 

 now and then command of his wits ; but by staying with us for 

 a fortnight while we rode through the woods, he slowly recov- 

 ered his memory of the place and finally selected a tree as most 

 likely the one we sought. The surface showed nothing that could 

 be identified as an axe-mark; but by carefully scraping the bark 

 and wood away we came upon ancient buried scars, which were 

 evidently made by a tomahawk, such as the surveyors of the 

 eighteenth century used ; so the title was established. This case 

 of slowly recovered memory interested me much and aroused in 

 me a sense of the mystery of mind that has not passed away. 

 I regard these experiences with a people of another age and 



