682 THE GEORGE CATLIN INDIAN GALLERY. 



"Hut—tut— -tat! " said Melody, "you ill-mannerly fellow! what are you about? 

 You will blow us all up here, Jim, if you utter such sentiments as those. I think the 

 French ladies the finest in the world except the Americans, and if they heard such 

 ideas as those advanced by us they would soon drive us out of Paris." 



"Yes," said Jim (in English again), "yes, I know— I know you like 'em— may be 

 very good, but you see I no like 'em!" In his decided dislike, Jim's excitement was 

 too great for his ideas to flow smoothly any further, and Mr. Melody not disposed to 

 push the argument the subject was dropped, and preparations made for the day exhi- 

 bition, the hour for which was at hand. 



After their exhibition was over and they had taken their dinner and chickabobboo 

 (at the former of which they had had the company of their old friend Bobasheela), 

 their pipe was lit, and the conversation resumed about the French ladies, for whom 

 ' Jim's dislike was daily increasing, and, with his dislike, his slanderous propensity. 

 He could not divest his mind of the nine thousand illigitimate and abandoned little 

 babies that he had seen, and the affection for dogs, which, instead of exposing, they 

 secure with ribbons, and hold one end in their hands or tie it to their apron-strings. 

 This was a subject so glaring to Jim's imagination that he was quite fluent upon it 

 at a moment's warning, even when standing up or sittiug, without the necessity of re- 

 sorting to his usual and eccentric attitude. This facility caused him to be more lavish 

 of his abuse, and at every interview in the rooms he seemed to be constantly frown- 

 ing upon the ladies and studying some new cause for abusing them, and drawing 

 Mr. Melody and the doctor into debates when they got back into their own apart- 

 ments. Such was the nature of the debate he had just been waging and which he 

 had ended in his usual way, with the last word to himself, " I no care ; me no like -em." 



THE CATACOMBS — THE DOCTOR'S DREAM. 



The subject was here changed, however, by Mr. Melody's reminding them that this 

 day was the time they had set to visit the morgue and the catacombs, for which an order 

 had been procured. These had been the favorite themes for some days, and there 

 had been the greatest impatience expressed to go and see the naked dead bodies of 

 the murdered and felo-dc-scs daily stretched out in the one, and the five millions of 

 skulls and other human bones that are laid up like cob-houses under a great part of 

 the city. Bobasheela had described to them the wonders of this awful place, which 

 he had been in on a former occasion, and Daniel had read descriptions from books 

 while the Indians had smoked many a pipe, but when the subject was mentioned on 

 this occasion there were evident proofs instantly shown that some influence had pro- 

 duced a different effect upon their minds, and that they were no longer anxious to go. 

 M. Vattemare, in speaking of the catacombs a few days before, had said that about 

 a year ago two young men from the West Indies came to Paris, and, getting an order 

 to visit the catacombs, entered them, and, leaving their guide, strolled so far away 

 that they never got out and never have been found, but their groans and cries are 

 still often heard under different parts of the city. 



ALARM OF THE INDIANS. 



But the immediate difficulty with the Indians was a dream the Doctor had had the 

 night before, and which he had been relating to them. He had not, he said, dreamed 

 anything about the catacombs, but he had seen See-catch -e-ivee-be, the one-eyed wife 

 of the "Fire-eater" (a sorcerer of their tribe), who had followed his track all the way 

 to the great village of the whites (London), and from that to Paris, where he saw her 

 sitting on abridge over the water; that she gave him a pair of new moccasins of 

 moose-skin, and told him that the Gitchee Manitou (the Great Spirit) had been very 

 kind in not allowing him and Wash-ka-mon-ya (Jim) to go under the ground in the 

 great village of the whites in England, and their lives were thereby saved. She 

 then went under an old woman's basket, who was selling apples, and disappeared. 

 He could not understand why he should have such a vision as this the very night be- 



