188 REVIEWS— WANDERINGS OP AN ARTIST. 



stand still, meanwliile, as the scenes of his western wanderings have 

 seemed to do. " On my return to Canada," says he, " from the con^^ 

 tinent of Europe, where I had passed nearly four years in studying 

 my profession as a painter, I determined to devote whatever talents 

 and proficiency I possessed to the painting of a series of pictures 

 illustrative of the North American Indians and scenery. The sub- 

 ject was one in which I felt a deep interest in my boyhood. I had 

 been accustomed to see hundreds of Indians about my native village, 

 then Little York, muddy and dirty, just struggling into existence, 

 now the City of Toronto, bursting forth in all its energy and com- 

 mercial strength. But the face of the red man is now no longer seen. 

 All traces of his footsteps are fast being obliterated from his once 

 favourite haunts, and those who would see the Aborigines of this 

 country in their original state, or seek to study their native manners 

 and customs, must travel far through the pathless forest to find 

 them." Travel far, accordingly, he did, and the long interval since 

 his return has been spent in completing a series of paintings in oil, 

 including portraits of chiefs, warriors, and celebrated medicine men, 

 as well as of Indian beauties ; pictures of dances, hunts, and other 

 characteristic scenes illustrative of Indian life, along with landscapes 

 depicting the strange scenery of the unexplored West. Some of 

 the illustrations given in the present volume, such as the Chimney 

 Bock, present its striking geological features, others cannot fail to 

 interest the ethnologist, and this the accompanying narrative tends 

 to increase. 



The portrait of Mancemuckt, for example, the Chief of the Skene 

 tribe on the Columbia River, is full of ethnic character, and no less 

 so is that of Ogemawwah-Chack, "The Spirit Chief," an Esquimaux 

 from the Hudson's Bay, who, according to received opinion, was 110 

 years old at the time his portait was taken : and Mr. Kane adds, 

 " The events which he related as having witnessed seemed to warrant 

 the belief. He had an only son, whom I often met, quite elderly in 

 appearance. The mother of this boy had died very shortly after his 

 birth, and there being no woman giving suck near at the time, the 

 father, to soothe the cries of the starving infant, placed the child's 

 mouth to his own breast, and finding that the child derived some 

 benefit from it, he continued the practice for some days, and, strange 

 to say, milk flowed from his nipples, and he brought up the child 

 without the assistance of any woman." 



