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UNITY AND CONTINUITY. 323 



men and women. As a specimen, I may mention an 

 unpublished myth collected "by Mr. Rand among the 

 Micmacs. It is a story of the adventures of the 

 " Rushing Wind and Rolling Wave/' personified as- 

 young men who set out on their travels, and who pass 

 through many adventures, all more or less related to 

 their proper characters. They combine to overthrow 

 the cabins of a village that they may enjoy the con- 

 fusion of the inmates. They go on a hunting expedi- 

 tion, and drive before them multitudes of birds and 

 fish, and they throw down trees to kill the deer and 

 other wild animals of the forest . Finally, after roving 

 around the world and working much mischief and 

 some good on land and sea, they are married to two 

 lovely girls, named respectively the Calm and the 

 Sea- foam, and by these their rude energies are sub- 

 dued, so that always the storm and the calm alternate 

 with each other, and waves rage only for a time, and 

 then subside in stillness and creamy foam. Such 

 plays of fancy are obviously the rudiments of true 

 poetic myths, and would require only the knowledge 

 of letters to be developed into poetry like that which 

 comes down to us from ancient India and Greece. 



As a specimen of a lighter style, I may give from 

 Schoolcraft the Song of the Frog in Spring, when it 

 awakes from its winter torpor and complains in its shrill 

 and monotonous evening songs of the long oppres- 

 sion of the frost and snow. Every one who has listened 

 to the batrachian chorus which in a spring evening 

 in America issues from every swamp and pond, can 



