234 CANOE PATHS. 



make friends of some of the local Indians; though 

 there may have been drawbacks in the way of 

 "no society," there were other attractions which 

 made many of our forefathers prefer the forest to 

 the city. 



Now as regards the rivers and great waterways, 

 which in a boundless tree-covered region, form (as the 

 late Mr. Parkman has so well expressed it) " the liquid 

 highways of the forest," * we feel bound to say a few 

 words before we close this section. We imagine the 

 phrase itself to be one of those beautiful figures of 

 speech, so common in the picturesque oratory of the 

 Indians, when describing the glories of their forest 

 homes: but however that may be (for Mr. Parkman 

 himself was a master of descriptive narrative), it is 

 not a little curious to find almost the same expressive 

 simile in use, thousands of miles away, among some 

 of the most degraded races of hopeless savages existent 

 in the New World : we refer to the Indian forest tribes 

 upon the Amazon River in Brazil, who speak of these 

 waterways as their " canoe paths, " f and we mention 

 the matter as a remarkable instance of the elegance 

 of diction so often to be found among the wildest 

 children of Nature, who draw all their ideas and similes 

 from the Great Book of Nature, their only study. 



A forest stream regarded simply as a " canoe path" 

 we need hardly say, supplies a natural highway, smoother, 

 more beautiful, and more enduring than anything ever 

 constructed by human hands in comparison to such a 

 pathway, the imperishable surface of " The Appian 



* History of the Conspiracv of Pontiac, by Francis Parkman (the 

 younger), 1885, Vol. i., p. 147. 



7 See Brazil, the River Amazon, and the Coast } by Herbert H. 

 Smith, 1880, p. 87. 



