“You shall see the ‘Dead men’s feast,’” said Logan.  I followed him in silence, till we reached the southern bank of the Ohio, not far from his own residence.  The tribe was seated in a beautiful and secluded prairie, that just afforded a vista of the river through the cypress swamp between.  A number of men and women seemed busily engaged in the decoration of others with belts, beads, and brilliant-coloured garments; and these latter seemed passive or asleep.  Logan laid down the load he carried in his blanket, and unwrapped the burden that had so long attracted my attention. “’Tis my grandsire!” said he:  “he has only been two years buried:—­I have brought him far.  Aid me to cleanse the brave old limbs and skull from these worms, that his spirit may rejoice over the feast with his red children.  Haste! my father yonder is painted and dressed already.”

* * * * *

Before I quitted Kentucky, I made a point of visiting the celebrated and immense nitre caverns or catacombs of the limestone region.  Here I found the mummies of the pigmy race that once inhabited the gigantic valley of the Mississippi, adorned with strings of shell-wampum and turkeys’ feathers—­seated in death like the ancient Naso-menes, grinning at me with their long inhuman fore-teeth—­and came out as wise as I went in.

* * * * *

“O,” said the captain, “a burial in Canada is no trifle in winter.  Just before you arrived, our drummer died, and we mustered spades, picks, and shovels, to dig a grave for him; but the ground was one rock every where, and after trying twenty places we found—­that we had spoiled our tools.  It took the armourer next day to steel them all.  The third day we got down four inches and a half, in the softest soil we could find; but it would only grind up pinch by pinch.  The fourth day the armourer was at work again.  The fifth day the whole company turned out in a rage with the ground, and having got under the frost in some degree, sunk the grave full nine inches more.  This night another soldier, a corporal, died; and his comrades were almost dead with disappointment and vexation.  The bodies would keep in the frost very well; but we had not a spare room in the barrack, and their comrades wanted to get them out of the way of a wedding.  Well, sir, the sixth day I divided the garrison in two, and set them at separate graves; but, unluckily, they drank to keep up their spirits in the battle with the frost, and fought about the corporal’s right of priority, and the freezing point of brandy.  Worst of all, they forgot to cover the new picked surfaces with straw and blankets, so that when they came in the morning the points of attack were as invulnerable as ever.  In despair they buried both in one grave—­the corporal undermost—­without further efforts to attain a decent depth.  As to six feet, it was quite unfathomable.  They heaped all the stones