44 
THE GREAT HORNED OWL. 
advantage of by the well informed, for purposes far from 
what ought to be the duty of a better education to inculcate. 
None are more accessible to such superstitions than the 
primitive natives of Ireland, and the north of Scotland. Dr. 
Richardson thus relates an instance, which came to his own 
knowledge, of the consequences arising from a visit of this 
nocturnal wanderer : — 
u A party of Scottish Highlanders, in the service of the 
Hudson's Bay Company, happened, in a winter journey, to 
encamp after nightfall in a dense clump of trees, whose dark 
tops and lofty stems, the growth of more than one century, 
gave a solemnity to the scene that strongly tended to excite 
the superstitious feelings of the Highlanders. The effect was 
heightened by the discovery of a tomb, which, with a natural 
taste often exhibited by the Indians, had been placed in this 
secluded spot. Our travellers, having finished their supper, 
were trimming their fire preparatory to retiring to rest, when 
the slow and dismal notes of the Horned Owl fell on the ear 
with a startling nearness. None of them being acquainted 
with the sound, they at once concluded, that so unearthly 
a voice must be the moaning of the spirit of the departed, 
whose repose they supposed they had disturbed, by inad- 
vertently making a fire of some of the wood of which his 
tomb had been constructed. They passed a tedious night 
of fear, and, with the first dawn of day, hastily quitted the 
ill-omened spot." 
