The Canadian Brothers, or the Prophecy Fulfilled a Tale of the Late American War — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 269 pages of information about The Canadian Brothers, or the Prophecy Fulfilled a Tale of the Late American War — Volume 1.

The Canadian Brothers, or the Prophecy Fulfilled a Tale of the Late American War — Volume 1 eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 269 pages of information about The Canadian Brothers, or the Prophecy Fulfilled a Tale of the Late American War — Volume 1.
expeditions of a predatory nature, carrying off the customary spoils.  We cannot import a better idea of the head of the warrior, than by stating, that we never recal that of the gigantic Memnon, in the British Museum, without being forcibly reminded of Split-log’s.  The Indian, however, was notorious for a peculiarity which the Egyptian had not.  So enormous a head, seeming to require a corresponding portion of the several organs, nature had, in her great bounty, provided him with a nose, which, if it equalled not that of Smellfungus in length, might, in height and breadth, have laughed it utterly to scorn.  Neither, was it a single, but a double nose—­two excrescences, equalling in bulk a moderate sized lemon, and of the spongy nature of a mushroom, bulging out, and lending an expression of owlish wisdom to his otherwise heavy features.  As on that of the Memnon, not a vestige of a hair was to be seen on the head of Split-log.  His lips were, moreover, of the same unsightly thickness, while the elephantine ear had been slit in such a manner, that the pliant cartilage, yielding to the weight of several ounces of lead which had for years adorned it, now lay stretched, and coquetting with the brawny shoulder on which it reposed.  Such was the Huron, or Wyandot Chief, whose cognomen of Split-log had, in all probability, been derived from his facility in “suiting the action to the word;” for, in addition to his gigantic nose, he possessed a fist, which in size and strength might have disputed the palm with Maximilian himself:  although his practice had chiefly been confined to knocking down his drunken wives, instead of oxen.

The second Chief, Round-head, who, by the way, was the principal in reputation after Tecumseh, we find the more difficulty in describing from the fact of his having had few or none of those peculiarities which we have, happily for our powers of description, been enabled to seize hold of in Split-log.  His name we believe to have been derived from that indispensable portion of his frame.  His eye was quick, even penetrating, and his stem brow denoted intelligence and decision of character.  His straight, coal black, hair, cut square over the forehead, fell long and thickly over his face and shoulders.  This, surmounted by a round slouched hat, ornamented with an eagle’s feather, which he ordinarily wore and had not even now dispensed with, added to a blue capote or hunting frock, produced a tout ensemble, which cannot be more happily rendered than by a comparison with one of his puritanical sly-eyed namesakes of the English Revolution.

Whether our third hero, Walk-in-the-water, derived his name from any aquatic achievement which could possibly give a claim to its adoption, we have no means of ascertaining; but certain it is that in his features he bore a striking resemblance to the portraits of Oliver Cromwell.  The same small, keen, searching eye—­the same iron inflexibility of feature, together with the long black hair escaping from beneath the slouched hat, (for Walk-in-the-water, as well as Round-head, was characterized by an unconscious imitation of the Roundheads of the revolution)—­all contributed to render the resemblance as perfect, as perfection of resemblance can be obtained where the physical, and not the moral, man, forms the ground of contrast.

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The Canadian Brothers, or the Prophecy Fulfilled a Tale of the Late American War — Volume 1 from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.