TACOMA AND THE INDIAN LEGEND OF HAMITCHOU 



was calm and content. Hiaqua and wealth seemed to 

 have lost their charms for him. Tacoma, shining 

 like gold and silver and precious stones of gayest 

 lustre, seemed a benign comrade and friend. All the 

 outer world was cheerful and satisfying. He thought 

 he had never awakened to a fresher morning. He was 

 a young man again, except for that unusual stiffness 

 and unmelodious creaking joints. He felt no appre- 

 hension of any presence of a deputy tamanoiis, sent 

 by Tamanoiis to do malignities upon him in the lonely 

 wood. Great Nature had a kindly aspect, and made 

 its divinity perceived only by the sweet notes of birds 

 and the hum of forest life, and by a joy that clothed 

 his being. And now he found in his heart a sympathy 

 for man, and a longing to meet his old acquaintances 

 down by the shores of Whulge. 



"He rose, and started on the downward way, smil- 

 ing, and sometimes laughing heartily at the strange 

 croaking, moaning, cracking, and rasping of his joints. 

 But soon motion set the lubricating valves at work, 

 and the sockets grew slippery again. He marched 

 rapidly, hastening out of loneliness into society. The 

 world of wood, glade, and stream seemed to him 

 strangely altered. Old colossal trees, firs behind which 

 he had hidden when on the hunt, cedars under whose 

 drooping shade he had lurked, were down, and lay 

 athwart his path, transformed into immense mossy 

 mounds, like barrows of giants, over which he must 

 clamber warily, lest he sink and be half stifled in the dust 

 of rotten wood. Had Tamanoiis been widely at work 

 in that eventful night ? or had the spiritual change 

 the old man felt affected his views of the outer world ? 



"Travelling downward, he advanced rapidly, and 

 just before sunset came to the prairies where his lodge 

 should be. Everything had seemed to him so totally 

 altered, that he tarried a moment in the edge of the 

 woods to take an observation before approaching his 

 home. There was a lodge, indeed, in the old spot, 



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