4 THE SCHOLAR AND THE SAVAGE. 



can here do comparatively little for a man. The proud 

 or boastful man is put to silence and acknowledges 

 his own littleness. If a crisis arises, the direction of 

 affairs must be left to the practised woodsman or 

 hardy pioneer, even though that man cannot read a 

 printed book. 



The late Mr. Francis Parkman, the Historian of 

 Canada, a most learned scholar and indefatigable 

 literary worker (who tells us that he himself first 

 learned his own powers on the prairies, among the 

 Indians of the Far West), has left us many striking 

 passages scattered here and there throughout his works,, 

 showing how strongly he was impressed by the 

 value of experiences and the spirit of self-reliance 

 gained in a savage land. We shall quote but a 

 single instance of such passages to be found in these 

 charming and instructive works, where he says 



" The nursling of civilization, placed in the midst of the 

 forest, and abandoned to his own resources, is as helpless as 

 an infant. To the practised woodsman the Forest is a home, 

 and yields him food, shelter, and raiment, and he threads 

 its trackless depths with undeviating foot; guiding his course 

 by the wind, the streams, or the trees. Such are the arts 

 which the white man has learned from the red, who reads 

 the signs of the forest as the scholar reads the printed page. 

 With us the name of savage is a byeword of reproach the 

 Indian looks with equal scorn on those who, buried in useless 

 lore, are blind and deaf to the great world of Nature " * 



This strange blindness to the great features of 

 Nature is indeed remarkable ! and it would almost 

 seem as if persons of high intellectual attainments are 



* The Conspiracy of Pontiac, by Francis Parkman, 1885, Vol. i,. 

 pp. 159, 160. 



