But the power of fate is with, the white man, and the Indian feels it.  This same gentleman told of his travelling through the wilderness with an Indian guide.  He had with him a bottle of spirit which he meant to give him in small quantities, but the Indian, once excited, wanted the whole at once.  “I would not,” said Mr. ——­, “give it him, for I thought, if he got really drunk, there was an end to his services as a guide.  But he persisted, and at last tried to take it from me.  I was not armed; he was, and twice as strong as I. But I knew an Indian could not resist the look of a white man, and I fixed my eye steadily on his.  He bore it for a moment, then his eye fell; he let go the bottle.  I took his gun and threw it to a distance.  After a few moments’ pause, I told him to go and fetch it, and left it in his hands.  From that moment he was quite obedient, even servile, all the rest of the way.”

This gentleman, though in other respects of most kindly and liberal heart, showed the aversion that the white man soon learns to feel for the Indian on whom he encroaches,—­the aversion of the injurer for him he has degraded.  After telling the anecdote of his seeing the Indian gazing at the seat of his former home,

  “A thing for human feelings the most trying,”

and which, one would think, would have awakened soft compassion—­ almost remorse—­in the present owner of that fair hill, which contained for the exile the bones of his dead, the ashes of his hopes, he observed:  “They cannot be prevented from straggling back here to their old haunts.  I wish they could.  They ought not to be permitted to drive away our game.”  OUR game,—­just heavens!

The same gentleman showed, on a slight occasion, the true spirit of a sportsman, or perhaps I might say of Man, when engaged in any kind of chase.  Showing us some antlers, he said:  “This one belonged to a majestic creature.  But this other was the beauty.  I had been lying a long time at watch, when at last I heard them come crackling along.  I lifted my head cautiously, as they burst through the trees.  The first was a magnificent fellow; but then I saw coming one, the prettiest, the most graceful I ever beheld,—­there was something so soft and beseeching in its look.  I chose him at once, took aim, and shot him dead.  You see the antlers are not very large; it was young, but the prettiest creature!”

In the course of this morning’s drive, we visited the gentlemen on their fishing party.  They hailed us gayly, and rowed ashore to show us what fine booty they had.  No disappointment there, no dull work.

On the beautiful point of land from which we first saw them lived a contented woman, the only one I heard of out there.  She was English, and said she had seen so much suffering in her own country, that the hardships of this seemed as nothing to her.  But the others—­even our sweet and gentle hostess—­found their labors disproportioned to their strength, if not to their patience; and, while their husbands and brothers enjoyed the country in hunting or fishing, they found themselves confined to a comfortless and laborious in-door life.  But it need not be so long.