POLLIPELL'S ISLAND. 



BY C. P. HOFFMAN. 



" I tell over these reputed tales, be it for nothing else than in favor of our 

 Poets, but will not recount the year lest I should be vainly curious about the 

 circumstances of the things whereof the substance is so much in the dark." 



MILTON . 



The learned Mr. Schoolcraft in noticing the Weendigoes, 

 and other fabled races of Giants among our aborigines, alludes 

 no where to the miraculous performances of the famous Giant 

 Pollipell. His memory belongs indeed to a school of 

 traditions entirely distinct from those which characterize the 

 favorite Algonquin family of that able Ethnographist ; still the 

 omission is not unworthy of note when coupled with the fact 

 that the early Jesuit writers upon this country who are so 

 minute in describing the marvels of the New York and Cana- 

 dian wilderness, have in the same unaccountable manner 

 utterly suppressed his name. It is a mystery, worthy of much 

 closer enquiry than we have the leisure to bestow, how these 

 last faithful chroniclers — who have transmitted such careful 



