HOME AGAIN. 175 



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in the grass, and sober women that sat all the while with their 

 blankets wrapped around them, as still as the dead monks in the 

 Piazza Borgonona. 



No white man had ever seen this island. The buzzard alone, 

 from his slow circles in the zenith, had marked the camp smoke, 

 under the long-hanging moss. Only the panther, from the laby- 

 rinth of the magnolias, or the alligator under the fallen trees, heard 

 the children's laugh, or the squaw's song to her swart pappoose. 

 So the stores of maize and powder were never burned by the 

 enemy, and the dried and wrinkled scalps that hung to the tent- 

 poles, some by their silken tresses and some by their short grey 

 curls, continued to smoke and dry in the fire-light and the sun- 

 shine, unreclaimed and unavenged. 



To explain the unconquerable aversion that has always existed 

 between the white man and the Indian on the North American 

 continent needs the description of many aggressions and revenges 

 that each has inflicted on the most susceptible feelings of the 

 other. The white man has colonised the lands of the savage by 

 sufferance, and then, by reason of the necessity of his position, kept 

 them by force. By superior foresight he has bought their peltry 

 at trivial prices. He has imported infectious diseases, has cor- 

 rupted with alcoholic drinks, has cut down preserves of game, has 

 amassed wealth, and power, and space, while his simpler-minded 

 neighbour has been stunted under his shadow. All this happens 

 even when the relations of the two races are amicable, and treaties 

 are observed with fidelity, and the aborigine knows that, as the 

 white man prospers he must decrease — that the white man's life 

 is the red man's death. But the outward peace in a little while 

 disappears. Some settlers' cattle or negro slaves have disappeared 

 from the woods, and the Indian is charged with the theft; the 

 charge is probably true. Some brave, in visiting the settlement, 

 has been intoxicated, and killed or maimed a white man who has 

 insulted him. The law claims a compensation. The law is made 

 by the white man, who regards the Indian with contempt and dis- 

 like, and the compensation is graded by his judgment, and not 

 by the meagre wealth of the Indian. Eetaliation follows the dis- 

 training ; a foray avenges the retaliation ; then a burning village 



