VILLAGE MINERS. 117 



They had no opportunities of polishing their discourse, 

 or their literary compositions. At this hour, in remote 

 parts of the great continent of America, the pioneers 

 of modern civilization may be said to live amid 

 mediaeval surroundings. The vast forests and endless 

 prairies give a romance to common things. Sometimes 

 pathos and sometimes humour arises in the log-cabin, 

 and when the history of these simple but deeply human 

 incidents comes to be told in this country, we are 

 moved by the strange piquancy of event and language. 

 From the new sounds and scenes, these Anglo-Saxons 

 hewing a way through pine and hemlock now, as their 

 ancestors hewed a way into England, have added fresh 

 words and phrases to our common tongue. These 

 words are not slang, they are pure primeval language. 

 They express the act, or the scene, or the circumstance, 

 as exactly as if it was painted in sound. For instance, 

 the word " crack " expresses the noise of a rifle ; say 

 " crack," and you have the very sound ; say " detona- 

 tion," and it gives no ear-picture at all. Such a word 

 is " ker-chunk." Imagine a huge log of timber falling 

 from rock to rock, or a wounded opossum out of a tree, 

 the word expresses the sound. There are scores of 

 such examples, and it is these pure primitive words 

 which put so much force into the narratives of Ameri- 

 can pathos and humour. 



Now, the dwellers in our own villages and country 

 places in their way make use of just such expressions, 

 that is, of words which afford the ear a picture of the 

 act or circumstance, hieroglyphs of sound, and often, 

 both in language and character, exhibit a close paral- 

 lelism with the Californian miners. Country people 



