THOKEATJ'S WILDNESS 199 



native gods, and is admitted from time to time to 

 a rare and peculiar society with Nature. He has 

 glances of starry recognition, to which our saloons 

 are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, 

 dim only because distant, is like the faint but satis- 

 fying light of the stars coinpared with the dazzling 

 but inefifectual and short-lived blaze of candles." 

 "We would not always be soothing and taming 

 nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but some- 

 times ride the horse wild, and chase the buffalo." 

 The only relics that interest him are Indian relics. 

 One of his regular spring recreations or occupations 

 is the hunting of arrow-heads. He goes looking for 

 arrow-heads as other people go berrying or botaniz- 

 ing. In his published journal he makes a long en- 

 try under date of March 28, 1859, about his pursuit 

 of arrow-heads. " I spend many hours every spring," 

 he says, " gathering the crop which the melting 

 snow and rain have washed bare. When, at length, 

 some island in the meadow or some sandy field 

 elsewhere has been ploughed, perhaps for rye, in 

 the fall, I take note of it, and do not fail to repair 

 thither as soon as the earth begins to be dry in the 

 spring. If the spot chances never to have been culti- 

 vated before, I am the first to gather a crop from it. 

 The farmer little thinks that another reaps a harvest 

 which is the fruit of his toil." He probably picked 

 up thousands of arrow-heads. He had an eye for 

 them. The Indian in him recognized its own. 



His genius itself is arrow-like, and typical of the 

 wild weapon he so loved, — hard, flinty, fine-grained, 



