IW X Myths <§" Legends A 1 VM A Bevond A S W 4 Peyond A Vl ^ f Our Borders ? if iSS$CSI &ZM2/Z/2/Z& BOOK 398.2.SK34 c. 1 SKINNER # MYTHS AND LEGENDS BEYOND OUR BORDERS 3 T153 D012MZb3 7 Wflbur L. Cross Library University of Connecticut GIFT OF SA-3 + MRS. ABRAHAM RATFIELD 2,\U\5 < ) &ljr~ v ^ Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders BY CHARLES M. SKINNER ¥ Myths and Legends of Our Own Land Illustrated. Two volumes. i2mo. Buck- ram, $3.00; half calf or half morocco, $6.00 Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders Illustrated. nmo. Buckram, $1.50; half calf or half morocco, $3.00 Myths and Legends of North America The above three volumes in a box. Buckram, $4.50; half calf or half morocco, $9.00 ¥ With Feet to the Earth New Edition, Enlarged Illustrated, nmo. Cloth, ornamental, $1.50 Do-Nothing Days Illustrated. i2mo. Cloth, ornamental, $1.50 Do-Nothing Days Library. The above two volumes in a box. Cloth, ornamental, $3.00 ; half calf or half morocco, 56.00 WA G- M Myths legends Mp tSK Beyond SB" «gv Our Borders /aw of *y ¥ v 4^ Charles M.Skinner ^ 'M Philadelphia ^London M ^^ J. B.Lippincott Company ^d^LfftJ ,MT. l Jl J*. \^l Copyright, 1898 J. B. Lippincott Company . SHE TO WHOM I OFFER THESE LEGENDS IS IN HER ART SO CONVINCING, SO POETIC, IN HER LIFE SO KIND, THAT I HESITATE TO PRESENT A WORK THAT MIGHT VEX HER BY ITS FAULTS. YET IN HER CHARITY I KNOW SHE WILL NOT LOOK FOR THEM. HENCE, I DEDICATE THIS BOOK TO MAUD $)ttfa« THE kind reception given to the author's book of legends pertaining to the United States has been an incentive to continue the work in the same field, and herewith is offered a volume of tra- dition from Canada and Mexico, thus covering the North American continent. A need of brevity- has made it advisable to keep to the method fol- lowed in " Myths and Legends of Our Own Land," of assembling traditions that attach to places, rather than attempting to set forth the almost exhaustless, always verbose, and sometimes childish folk-lore of the aborigines. Simple people, red people, and habitants, not readers, not logicians, not examiners, accept these tales from their old men and treasure them. Others may find amusement in them, and perhaps profit ; for, ingenuous as they are, they sometimes symbolize high truths. Cafile of Contents! Ganafca page Explorers and Aborigines 17 Myths of Creation, Heaven, and Hell 22 Glooslcap at Menagwes 34 The Dogs of Clote Scaurp 35 The Missions 37 — A Few Monsters 44 Some Names 49 Troubles on the St. Lawrence 55 American Elephants 63 Hidden Gold 66 How one Bear lost his Life 72 ^J- The Isle of Demons 74 The Figure in Smoky Hut 77 The Shadow of Holland Cove 81 The Friar of Campobello 83 Two Melicite Victories 85 The Flame Sloop of Caraquette 88 The Acadians and Evangeline 91 The Tolling off Gaspe 94 The Ride to Death 96 The General with an Ear 100 The Defence of St. John 101 Brother and Sister in Battle 105 The Golden Dog 107 The Grave in the Cellar no The Mountain and the See 113 The Sin of Father St. Bernard 114 Larouche had his Wish 118 The Heart of Frontenac 120 The Devil Dance on Orleans 122 9 Contents PAGE The Defiance at Elora 126 The Miracles of Sainte Anne 129 Tadousac Bell at Midnight 134 The Bell of Caughnawaga 137 The Massacre at Bic 1 39 The Doom of Mamelons 141 The Revenge of Hudson 143 Kenen's Sacrifice 146 The Calling of Zoe de Mersac 149 The Headless Deserters 153 The Devil's Head 155 Father Jacques's Vengeance 157 The Bonnechere Affair 161 He went back for his Gun 165 Kwasind, the Strong 166 The Curse of Success 168 The Death of Wahwun 172 The Devil's Half-Acre 174 Medicine Hat 176 Ghost Woman at the Blood Camp 178 The Blackfoot Eden 180 The Wicked Wife 183 Fourth of July at Yale 185 Death of the Great Beaver 187 Why the Mountains were made 189 The Place of Dead Men 191 How the Indians became Red 193 The Pool of Destruction 194 Yehl, the Light-Maker 196 The Shelter of Edgecumbe 198 How Selfishness was punished 199 The Ghost of Sitka Castle 202 A Fatal Rivalry 204 Bad Boys of Na-as River 207 The Baffled Ice God 208 10 Contents tKlCXtCO PAGE White Visitors before Columbus 213 — The White God 217 Spiritual Guidance 225 Eagle, Snake, and Cactus 231 Told in Yucatan 233 Our Lady of Guadalupe 239 Our Lady of the Remedies 242 Some other Miracles 244 The Picture and the Storm 246 The Mischievous Cocktail 247 The Councillors of Lagos 250 The Humpback of Colima 253 Why Cholula Pyramid was built 255 The Ark on Colhuacan 257 Making the Sun 259 The Popul Vuh 261 Fathers of the Miztecs 264 The Willing Captive 266 The Death-Dance of Tezcatlipoca 268 Other Wiles of the Evil God 272 The Aztec Tannh9user 274 Huitzilopochtli 276 The War-God takes a Bride 279 El Dorado 280 The Dwarf's House 283 Why Valdez bought Prayers 285 Father Jose's Love 288 The Devil in Prison 292 The Alligator-Tree 294 Evil Spirits in the Springs 296 Devils and Doubloons 299 Incidents of War 301 Gambling Away the Sun 304 Huascar's Prophecy 305 11 Contents PAGB The Medal and the Orchid 3°7 The Honest Muleteers 3 IQ Aiguerre's Fire 3 X 3 The Amazons 3 X 5 Bolivar at Caracas 3 l6 12 Illustrations Chapultepec Frontispiece The Church at Tadousac Page 134 Medicine Hat, Assiniboia " 176 Popocatepetl " 229 Canatra Myths and Legends Beyond Our Borders EXPLORERS AND ABORIGINES CANADA, from its earliest settlement, has been to most white Americans a dark, cool land of mystery. Only since its railroads joined East and West together, since the frontier settlements of the last generation developed into cities, since the farming districts of the prairie began to draw their hardy populace from older lands, has it become known to our southern millions that it is a coun- try differing in little from their own, the same in speech and spirit, akin in laws and faith and man- ners. The history of the republic and that of the colony were the same down to the time of the Revo- lution, yet Canada's northern position, its settle- ment by the French, the individuality of its native tribes, its exploration by missionaries, its imagined remoteness, gave rise to tales that, while not veri- fied, had reason for being. The history of the province is full of romance. The legends that have grown from it compel the attention no more than the tales of conquest, diplomacy, daring, and difficulty, and those new reports of wealth on the 2 17 Myths and Legends Yukon. Many of the unwritten tales run counter to record, others so merge in it that it is impossible to separate them, but, as they have character, ro- mance, humor, or quaintness, they deserve to be saved from the assaults of commercialism and com- monplace. Long before the time of Cabot, Cartier, Roberval, Champlain, and Hudson, Canada was known, in Norse tradition, and it is claimed that Basque and Breton fishermen caught cod on the Grand Banks a century before Columbus's day. Canada was the first part of America to be discovered, and Bjarne Herjulfsson, son of an Icelander who had moved to Greenland, reached Cape Breton in the year 986, while trying to join his father in his new home. Fourteen years later Leif Ericsson, son of the Ice- landic jarl, Eric the Red, tried to find this new land. It is not known exactly where he went ashore, but Labrador was first sighted : Helluland, he called it; " a country of no advantages." Next he passed Markland, with its flat beaches and its woods : Nova Scotia ? And Vinland, which is any place you please, was last explored. Somewhere, possibly on the Penobscot, was the city of crystal and silver, Norumbega, Norombega, Norumbeque, and may- be Aranbega, Arambek, and Lorembek. New- foundland, oldest of the British colonies, was one of the first regions that seemed to promise wealth, for it did not take the explorers long to find that its waters swarmed with fish. Indeed, the 18 Beyond Our Borders Portuguese name of Bacalhaos, long borne by New- foundland, means codfish. Nor was Labrador without its promise in the eyes of those same Por- tuguese, for the name, which is in their tongue, means laborer. (It is not Le Bras d'Or, the arm of gold, for Cape Breton has its Bras d'Or.) " King Emanuel, having heard of the high trees growing in the northern countries, and having seen the abo- rigines, who appeared so well qualified for labor, thought he had found a new slave-coast like that which he owned in Africa, and dreamed of the tall masts he would cut and the men-of-war he would build from the forests." Mistaken man ! The power of the Latin races in North America was brief, and it left few marks in comparison with that of the Anglo Saxons who so soon possessed the land and who almost alone have made it what it is. Though racked by frequent wars in those dark times, the country advanced a little after every struggle, and the builders of air-castles, the founders of visionary empires, were jostled aside if they loitered in the way of progress. The Indians themselves throw little light on their own history, and if facts were originally embodied in their fantastic myths, the forms of these parables have in almost every case concealed the meanings. That in the days of unwritten history there were great political and military movements there is no doubt, — movements that to the red dwellers in this land were as momentous as the wars and changes 19 Myths and Legends in Europe were to the Greeks and Romans. We have reason to believe that men existed here long before the last of the North American glaciers, and that they were driven toward the warm belt by its advance ; that there are relations between the Alaskans and the Aztecs ; that the Canadian Indians drove the mound-builders southward six hundred years ago. The " great horned snake" of Ontario, against which they battled, may have been the snake- shaped forts of these mound-makers, like those remaining in the Ohio Valley. Their man-god, Michabo, or Hiawatha, " drives the serpents to the south." On Moose Mountain, Assiniboia, are cairns with lines of stones radiating from them, the early work of mound-builders, or imitations of it by their conquerors, who relate that the stones were placed there by the spirit of the winds. Various theories as to the origin of the Indians account for them (i) as autochthonous, or self-cre- ated : a legitimate theory, since the geologic age of this country qualifies it to have been not merely the original land of the Indians, but the cradle of the human race ; (2) as members of the lost tribes of Israel ; (3) as survivors of the sunken continent of Atlantis ; (4) as Phoenicians ; (5) as Carthaginians ; (6) as Greeks ; (7) as Chinese, who reached these shores in 458 a.d. ; and (8) as Mongols, who ar- rived in the thirteenth century. The latter theory, which would have assumed the peopling of a vast continent in a couple of hundred years, is of course 20 Beyond Our Borders absurd, but an identity of certain Canadian and cer- tain Asiatic tribes is at least suggested by likeness in their beliefs and customs, such as their tribal work and government, traditions, religious faiths, supersti- tions, way of regarding women, treatment of guests, sacrifices, burials, funerals, the wearing of feathers, use of bark utensils, form of weapons, dog feasts, games, emblems, pipe-smoking, serpent-worship, serpent-charming, sacred animals, dances, figures of oratory, and monosyllabic speech. In their free, sane life the physical adequacy of the Indians should have been maintained, and there is no reason to sup- pose that as a family they have deteriorated, in spite of the allegation that in the Ontario government park, at Rondeau, Lake Erie, the skeletons of well- proportioned men seven and one-half feet high have been unearthed. The later history of the red race is too familiar to recount, and it is most sad. When some royal commissioners in eastern Canada had the audacity to ask a native chief what claim his people had to the country, he replied only, " There lie our grandfathers ; there lie our fathers ; there lie our children.'* To the first settlers the idea that the savage could be a creature of sentiment was preposterous, and that he should wish to hold his ancestral woods and fields no less so. Bitter has been the strife that has driven him from his old estate. He is an outcast in his own land, a victim of wrongs uncounted and cruelties as dire as those with which he has retaliated on the aggressors. 21 Myths and Legends But he is not what so many have painted him. In many of his traditions it will be seen that he has a moral sense as keen as any one's, and courage to live to it; that he is a man. MYTHS OF CREATION, HEAVEN, AND HELL BELIEFS touching death, the spirit-world, and the hereafter vary with the different tribes of Canada, and some of them have undergone change from contact with missionaries. Often the merging-point of the old and the new belief is impossible to descry, while in the case of the teacher who came across the Pacific in a copper canoe, preached morality to the shore tribes, was crucified, arose, resumed preaching, and was after- ward obeyed, we find a blendingc^_t^_Cjhmst his- tory and the Hiawatha legend. The Nootkas in their version of this tale do not include either crucifixion or resurrection. On the contrary, they assume that the killing of the teacher was a good thing, because they secured his copper canoe and paddles, and the use of copper they learned at that time. Some of the great wooden images in their houses represent this teacher who promised a future life. Sheets of copper with eyes painted on them have been seen at Fort Rupert, and are thought to symbolize the sun. They are regarded with peculiar reverence. 22 Beyond Our Borders In a Chippewayan legend the first country was that through which the Copper-Mine River flows, and the ground was strewn with copper. A bird created this country, — avast bird whose glance was lightning, and thunder the shaking of his wings. He created the earth by touching the primal ocean. The first men wore out their feet with walking and their throats with eating. Some pretty traditions have grown from the im- planting of a new faith in imaginative soil. The loose quartz crystals found near Quebec are said to be Christ's tears, wept upon the earth for the sins of its people. The northern lights, which among ungospelled tribes are the spirits of dead friends dancing, the brighter the merrier, have turned to angels, throwing down snow to cool the parched in hell. An Indian who was discovered on all- fours in a wood near Wardsville, moving softly over the snow, was at first suspected of mischief; but he was only waiting to see the deer fall on their knees before the Great Spirit, as he had heard they did on Christmas night. Biblical teaching and native myth are queerly mixed in the Ojibway tale of the beginning of the race, which they say occurred at Torch Lake, or Lac du Flambeau. The Great Spirit had made the vegetation about this water, and was surprised when he saw a creature wallowing through the reeds in the form since taken by men, but covered with shining scales like a fish. This object went 23 Myths and Legends mooning about in such a mournful fashion that the Manitou, taking pity on him, made a woman, also covered with scales, and breathed life into her. He told her to wander by the shore, and presently she would find something she would be sure to like. The man found her while she slept, and, rousing her, took her to walk, showing where roots and herbs grew that were good for food. Her name, she told him, was Mani (Mary ?). He took her to his spacious lodge and went with her through his garden, warning her not to eat fruit from a certain tree that grew there. When she was alone, a handsome young Indian emerged mysteriously from the tree and urged her to pick and eat the fruit, adding that it made fine pre- serves. She ate, and persuaded her husband to do the same. The scales fell from their bodies, and they drew back among the bushes in shame. Then Gitche Manitou drove them away, so that they could no longer eat fruits, but had to live on meat. In his wandering the first man found a great book that began speaking to him. It told him to do so many things that he could not remem- ber half of them, and he threw it away, where- upon he found on the earth a book in sign lan- guage that covered only two squares of bark. This sign-book gave no laws, but told much about foods and remedies, so that in a few years his children be- came not only hunters but medicine-men. Manitou repented his anger and restored the people to his 24 Beyond Our Borders love again, ordering his own son, or agent, Mani- bozho, to make a paradise for them in the west, where the world ended. It is a beautiful country, and there, when they die, they battle and hunt no more, but live on sweet, shining mushrooms, play on the flute and drum, and dance all day. To reach this land they travel the Milky Way, the path of souls. They need bows or guns on the journey, but none after they reach paradise. If on the way they stop to eat a strawberry that a tempter oiFers to them, they fall from the bright bridge and become frogs as they touch the earth. Among the Blackfeet the sand-hills of the plains, near the United States boundary, were the shadow- land, the ghost-place, the limbo of recently de- parted souls. Our shadows are held to be actual souls. Dead persons sometimes live again as ani- mals, and owls are the ghosts of medicine-men. In the Red River country the dead hover about in the form of eagles, but some of the Siwash believe they take the forms of birds more foul of habit, that lurk over the place of their demise for four days. In order to keep them at a distance the sur- vivors burn old moccasins that make a fetid smoke. Some of the far northwestern Indians believed that hell was in the ice, for it is natural that the cold of the Arctic winter should, to them, stand for the extremest suffering, but some of the Eskimos put the place of future punishment beneath the sea, and heaven above, with plenty of walrus. Their 25 Myths and Legends hell is like Dante's : of successive cellars, and the deeper go the damned the colder it grows. The wickedest go to the bottom. The Eskimos, by the way, are advanced beyond certain primitive beliefs, and the new woman is no stranger to them. The Sun was a youth to whom the Great Spirit gave wings that he might chase the Moon, — a winged girl. Aoguta and her daughter Sedna are among their chief deities. The Hudson Bay Eskimos tell us that the first man sprang to being in a beautiful valley, and married the only girl on earth, after he had picked her as a flower. They were the parents of all mankind. The Assiniboins believed that hell was in the Great Selkirk glacier. The un- speakable majesty of this ice mass and its moun- tain setting to them was merely dreadful. The Chippewas held that the wicked were immersed to their chins in water, and that they could not leave it, although, to add to their discomfiture, the happy hunting-grounds were in their view. Like the Greeks, many of the Indians peopled the woods, hills, and waters with gods and spirits, who were amiable or devilish according to their environment and according to the nature of the imagination that evoked them. They personified many of the stars and mountains ; a comet was a winged creature breathing fire ; the morning star was the Early Riser ; the Dipper was the Seven Persons ; the moon was the Night Red Light ; the Milky Way was the Wolf Road. Spirits of places 26 Beyond Our Borders sometimes spoke to those who asked advice of them, and while La Salle's boat, the Griffin, was in process of building at Cayuga Creek, he went to Niagara to consult the oracle at Devil's Hole. A voice spoke from it warning him to abandon his voyage on pain of death by treachery. He met that fate. The Nipissings were stigmatized by the Jesuits as " the sorcerers," and Lake Nipissing was beset by devils and magicians. The mountain in British Columbia, or Washing- ton, on which life was preserved during the great flood is impossible of identification, but deluge le- gends pertain to several of the peaks. The Takul- lies say that the earth-builder was a muskrat, which, diving here and there in the universal ocean, brought up mud, and spat it out in one place until an island was formed, which grew to be the earth. After it had been peopled a lire swept over it, destroying all the surface save one mountain that held a deep cave, and in this hid one man and one woman until the earth was cool again, when they emerged and repeopled it. This myth is oddly repeated in Paraguay and Bolivia. Alaskan Kaiganees say that the big canoe in which a good man was saved in the time of a great flood rested on a mountain just back of Howkan, and one old fellow claimed, a dozen or two of years ago, that he had a piece of its bark anchor-rope. The crow that flew out of the ark still nests in the crater of Mount Edgecumbe, near Sitka, and catches whales. On Forester Island 27 Myths and Legends they say that towns were destroyed by pest and fire for their wickedness, and that a woman who looked back in the act of flight was turned to stone, her lodge and that of her brother being also changed to rock at the same moment, and you see them in the river to-day, — warnings to obey the Great Spirit when he speaks. A legend of a collision of the earth with a fiery dragon (a comet ?) is found among many of the Algonquins. Among the Dog-Rib Indians of the Barren Grounds there is a belief in one Chapawee, a mis- chief-maker who plunged the earth into a long period of darkness by catching the sun in a noose and tying it fast, so that it could not rise above the horizon. Does this typify the Arctic winter? After a time he sent animals to gnaw the snare asunder, and they were burned to ashes. Does this clothe in parable the outbreak of a volcano, or the dissipation of the ice in the Arctic summer ? Be- like it is neither, for many of the traditions are but old wives' tales, without a meaning. Men, meas- urably civilized, lived in North America twenty thousand years ago ; and some of the myths like the foregoing are thought to preserve the memory of the last great glacier, that covered the continent down to the fortieth parallel, burying beneath it the cities of this ancient people. One of the traditionary characters among the western tribes, from the Blackfeet to the Aleuts of Alaska, was Old Man. He varies in power and 28 Beyond Our Borders importance in different parts of the country, but among the Aleuts he has many of the attributes of the Great Spirit, and is a secondary god. He played a Cadmus part, dropping stones on the earth, that presently sprang up in human form. Some that he flung into the air became birds, those that he cast to a distance were quadrupeds and serpents, and those that he tossed into the sea turned to fish. Thus was the world peopled. The Black- feet say that Old Man acquired a wife, a daughter, and a son-in-law. The latter was not worth much. There arrived in the lodge a young man who had sprung from the blood of some game they were preparing for the pot, and this young one and Old Man attempted to stop the thieving and abuse of the son-in-law. They could not, and as this ob- jectionable person had an especially violent tantrum on a certain occasion, the good ones shot him dead, and there were peace and plenty afterward. All of which has been construed as a day and night myth, a summer and winter myth, a sunshine and storm myth, a famine and plenty myth. Maybe. While some ethnologists claim that the Micmacs are the Skraelings of the Northmen, the first known explorers of our eastern coast, others relate the western tribes to the Asiatics. There are Greek words in Central American tongues, likenesses to Greek, Indian, Assyrian, and Egyptian architecture in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, pictures there of animals more common to Asia than to this 29 Myths and Legends continent, round towers in the West like those of Ireland, and faiths and myths among the aborigines resembling those of the Old World. The proud Abenakis, of eastern Canada, say that they are the original people ; they acknowledge no ancestry ; they built villages, and believe that " after making them and their land the Great Spirit made the rest carelessly. " They were related in marriage to Pamola, the terrible One who lived in Ktaadn, and whose son killed game and men by pointing at them. On midsummer day, " the day of sparkling fire," they built a large fire and danced about it — a Phoenician custom, the fire representing the sun. This custom the Acadians modify in their " fire talk" on St. John's Eve, when the priest heaps fra- grant boughs before his church and recites prayers as the flames crackle among them. So soon as this is seen the country glitters and the news goes round ; for if a death has occurred the farmer dashes out his fire ; if sickness, he lets it flicker and die ; if all is well, it blazes jubilantly. A theory that the northern Indians descended from Tyrians and Israelites who came over in 332 b.c. is based on the existence among those tribes of the deluge legend, that of the dove of discovery, and that of the ark of the covenant. The ark, which contains a shell that speaks oracles, under- stood only by the medicine-men, is never allowed to touch the earth, but is carried by the faithful into battle. When it is advanced among the enemy all 30 Beyond Our Borders rush to its safety, as the Scots pressed about the heart of Bruce when it was thrown among the foe, and as some tribes rallied about the heads of their chiefs when, after death, they were carried into the fight on poles, as standards. The exact where- abouts of this ark remains a mystery not to be re- vealed to the profane. But most wide-spread of all beliefs among the red men of the north is that in Nanabush, Manabozho, Glooskap, or Hiawatha, who is buried beneath Thunder Cape, or " the sleeping giant," a basaltic uplift, thirteen hundred and fifty feet high, at the northwest corner of Lake Superior, and whose deeds of valor and charity are told in many tongues. Some say he was the statesman who federated the Six Nations and preached arbitration. He took on human form to benefit mankind, but often went away and dwelt with birds in a great space and great light. He came from the east in a granite boat, with a woman who was not his wife, for he never took one. When on a later voyage he gave room in his boat to a woman of evil character — as was proved by the storm that arose about him — he sprang ashore, leaving her to drift about until she became a shark. Hiawatha figures sometimes as creator, sometimes as Messiah, sometimes as a Noah who was saved from the deluge, and who sent forth the bird called the diver from his boat, to learn if the earth was emerging from the waters. On their subsidence he became the father of a new race, and 3i Myths and Legends walked over all America. In some legends he is the Hare, and the Hare was the sun. His foe, the snake prince, the god of evil, whom he destroyed, ,has been thought to be a comet. Another foe, the giant frog, vast and cold, squatting over miles of plain, was the great glacier of the ice age. Be- lieving that his father had killed his mother, he chased him to the shores of the Arctic sea. His brother, the Flint, he killed in fight, and the boul- ders on the plains of Assiniboia, Alberta, and Sas- katchewan were the missiles they hurled at each other. In the mission-yard at Victoria, on the North Saskatchewan, was a meteorite that Mani- tou — possibly Manabozho — had cast down, and the Indians believed that to move it would be to incur his hate, and bring upon them battle, disease, and scarcity of game. White men moved it, and, unhappily for those who had been inveighing against the superstition of the Indians, war, small- pox, politics, and famine quickly followed. In the east he was called Glooskap. Minas Basin, Nova Scotia, was his beaver-pond, dammed at Cape Blomidon, his throne ; but when he saw that the pent waters were rising among the villages, to the alarm and distress of the people, he burst the rocks asunder, and swift tides now eddy through " the Gut." Here he fought and killed the Great Beaver, whose bones are the Five Islands, near Parrsboro', though this legend appears also at Sault Sainte Marie. Spencer's Island is his upset kettle. 32 Beyond Our Borders On Partridge Island he held a great feast with Kit- pooseeagoono, and the pair of them ate a whale. Fragments of a great causeway of his building are seen in islands off the shore of the old maritime provinces. He was much in company with his uncle, Great Turtle, and shared many of his adven- tures. At one time, when he was not at hand, some hostiles caught the Turtle and condemned him to the stake. He rushed into the flames so eagerly that they pulled him out. Then they resolved to cut his throat, whereupon he seized a knife and hacked himself so fiercely that they disarmed him. Finally they agreed that he must be drowned, and this fate seemed to put him in terror, so that he caught at trees as they urged him on; but once at the water's edge the cunning fellow chuckled, dived out of sight, and so escaped. When the English came, Glooskap waded from Newfoundland to Nova Sco- tia, and either freed his hunting-dogs or turned them to stone, that their cries might not betray the lodges of his people to the strangers. But the red men became evil after they had known the English, and Glooskap, with Great Turtle, entered his white stone canoe and sailed away to the west, singing — some say up the St. Lawrence ; others say across the Great Lakes. All nature mourns his return, and the owl, the loon, and other birds and beasts found new voices on the night when he went away. 33 Myths and Legends GLOOSKAP AT MENAGWES THE spirit of the river St. John having become noisy and audacious, damaging the banks and brawling defiance to the gods, the Great Spirit showed his anger by closing its mouth. The re- mains of his dam are overhung by the suspension bridge in the present city of St. John. When the tide runs out there is a fall toward the sea, and when the tide runs in the fall tumbles across the reef up-river. This is the only reversible fall in the world, they say, and the lumber barges in the whirl of it, going up or down with the tide, are a sight worth seeing. Were the rock at the foot of the gorge to be blasted, so as to afford free ingress to the salt water, some miles of the land now culti- vated and dwelt upon, back of the city, would be permanently flooded. One Indian legend has it that a giant beaver built a dam across the outlet, creating a flood behind it in which all the inland people were drowned. Glooskap visited this point and named it Menagwes. It once befell him to take a long journey for the good of the human race, for he went about teaching men how to build canoes, to smoke pipes, to raise crops, to use paint, to make maple sugar, and, as he left his house unprotected, this chance for injury was not neglected by the wizards and demons that always lurk in good men's shadows. Disguised in thunder-clouds, they wrecked and burned his lodge, slew his friends and 34 Beyond Our Borders servants, and when he returned to find ashes and tokens of strife where had been comfort and peace, his tears fell so fast and free that they were like rain. A few of the wizards he tracked to the site of Pictou, where he slew them. A witch he caught in her lodge, on the site of Liverpool, Nova Scotia, and, after a fight that the stars stood still to see, he tore her into pieces. Then, calling to the whales, he mounted their backs and rode to New- foundland, and appeared, so towering that his head touched the sky, before other of his enemies, who shrank into the fog in terrified silence. In vain their cunning, for he searched out and destroyed them. Returning to Menagwes, he wept afresh, for his friends were ashes. He could not give life. THE DOGS OF CLOTE SCAURP EARLY fishers on the Restigouche who had Indian guides reported a disturbance at night by unearthly noises that hurried through the wood about them. The Indians would draw nearer to the fire, listen to the uncanny laughter and wail- ing cries, making sure that they were not the calls of owls and panthers, and remark, " Clote Scaurp's hunting-dogs are out." Clote Scaurp, who is only Glooskap under another spelling or pronunciation, lived near the Restigouche, on the narrow Waagan, for a time. In some myths of 35 Myths and Legends this locality he is human, in others a demi-god, in more distant ones he appears to be the Old Man of the plains families. But he was a good-natured hero, who hunted more for company than for the joy of killing, and his dogs, though often heard, have never been seen. He talked with birds, beasts, and fishes, and only when he found that any one of them had become savage and cruel would he grow angry. The moon, for instance, was a huge and dangerous beast that went up and down the land devouring and killing, so that all things fled before it. Clote Scaurp set off with his dogs to check its devilish conduct, and, meeting it in the wood, he struck it such a terrific whack with his club that it nearly gave up its life. Not only did it cease to grow from that moment, but it peaked and pined to the thing we see at this day, or night, and clambered into the sky to be out of reach of his weapons. To nearly all other things Clote Scaurp was kind, and earth and his dogs have been sorry without him. As evil tendencies began to show themselves, not only among beasts but also among men — envy, avarice, dishonesty, ruffianism, laziness — he gathered all creatures about him and preached good manners. He helped them to be better by living better himself; but the more he did for them the less they would do for themselves, and they were full of evil will. Unable longer to endure this state, he resolved to say farewell to the creatures he had known ; so he called them from woods and 36 Beyond Our Borders fields and waters ; but, though he spread a mighty feast, only the brutes attended. The men were wholly ungrateful, and they hated lectures. At the end of the banquet Clote Scaurp and Great Turtle entered their canoe and rowed away toward the setting sun. All the brutes watched sorrowing, and listened to the mournful singing that came fainter and fainter out of the west. When, at last, the beasts broke silence to express their grief, each, to the general astonishment, spoke a different tongue from all the rest, and all fled as in fear, never again to meet in general council. The white owl calls all night, " I am sorry ;" and Clote Scaurp's dogs still seek him, howling in the woods along the Res- tigouche. Two rocks at the foot of Blomidon are called his dogs, and he will awaken them when he returns, they say ; but those who have heard them know that they still enjoy their liberty. THE MISSIONS ALTHOUGH we concede the benefits given to new lands by commercial enterprise and their conquest by enlightened peoples, in the case of Canada it must be confessed that religious en- thusiasm accomplished more, both for the explorers and for the natives, than any other cause. The first men to force a way to the inland lakes, to map the plains, rivers, and mountains, to effect a peace with the savages, were the missionaries, and but for 37 Myths and Legends their eagerness for the conversion of the Indians the safety and material development of the country- might have been long deferred. The Jesuits were especially courageous. Their enthusiasm defied all threats and survived all torture. One missionary, Father Jogues, was shockingly maltreated, and his hand was chopped off, yet he regarded these things only as passing pains, and kept on with his work. Another, who had been hunted off to the woods, was found there frozen to death, in the attitude of prayer. A missionary on the upper Ottawa was roasted over a slow fire, hot axes were placed about his neck and head, and in mockery he was baptized with boiling water. Yet to his last breath he implored divine protection for his tormentors. After the capture of Fort Ignace, on Lake Simcoe, the missionaries Lalemant and De Brebeuf were cruelly used. The former was covered with bark, roasted, and partly eaten before his voice ceased in prayer. His companion enraged the savages by his indifference, for he seemed careless of suffering, though they kept him alive for three hours to endure it, and at the last they ate his heart, in order that his courage and fortitude might pass into their bodies. It was such heroism that subdued the savagery of the red men and turned them into poor, dull, ambitionless people, to the comfort of the pale- faces, who are now able to cheat them in trade without the risk of so much as a prod in the solar plexus. The contrast between the conduct of the 38 Beyond Our Borders French explorers and that of the soldiers and dealers who arrived later is a contrast between religious France of the seventeenth century and Brumma- gem of the nineteenth. Even the Hudson Bay and Northwest companies have not escaped cen- sure, for it has been alleged that when a gun paid for as many beaver-skins as would reach to the muzzle of it, the skins packed flat and the gun held upright, the barrel of the weapon grew and grew with each successive year until the Indian, after he had bought it with the peltry, had to bor- row a file and cut off a foot of useless metal. And it is a fact that when certain red men received pay in five-dollar bills they readily exchanged one of those pieces of paper for two silver dollars, for they could not read the number on the bill. Missionaries encouraged the building of shrines and churches, and people who had visions or heard voices were invited to- commemorate the cir- cumstance. Our Lady of the Snows, for instance, appeared to a Breton cavalier who had lost his way while hunting on Trois Rivieres, and lighted him to a forge, where he found shelter. In return for this mercy he was induced by the priests to rear a shrine to her at Ville Marie, " the city of the mount," and so it came about that the Church of Our Lady of the Snows was erected on " the priests' farm" in Montreal. There is a faint and melancholy fear that the missionaries did a little cheating, from purely re- 39 Myths and Legends ligious motives. It has been set forth that the giant devil who infested Les Islets Machins, in the St. Lawrence, was not an entirely disingenuous creation. The Jesuits are charged with telling the Indians that he used a pine-tree as a club, that he sprang upon people who were fishing in his neigh- borhood or innocently paddling up and down the river, and, discovering by an instinct that never erred, which of them had not been baptized, he brained them forthwith, sparing only the Chris- tians. This tale led to so many conversions that the giant fled in disgust, for lack of occupation. So, too, the report that Cap de la Madelaine, on the St. Lawrence, was haunted by a Magdalen who cried all night for Christian burial, may have had its deterrent effect on the thoughtless or im- moral among the women of the settlements. The braillard de la Madelaine has been otherwise as- cribed to the soul of a murderous wrecker, to a priest who allowed a babe to die without baptism, and to a little boy that alone survived a wreck, though only for a few hours. Was Christianity taught before the time of the Jesuits ? Did the Norsemen teach it ? When Car- tier landed at Gaspe Basin on the St. Lawrence, and planted a cross on shore with great solemnity, he saw with surprise that the natives made obeisance to this object, as one with which they were familiar, al- though this was in 1 5 36, and Cartier was supposed to be the first white man in that region. The narrative 40 Beyond Our Borders of the Indians was to the effect that long before, when they had been troubled by a pestilence, their old men had a medicine dream, in which there ap- peared before them " a man exceedingly beautiful, with a cross in his hand, who bade them return home, make crosses like his, and present them to the heads of families, assuring them that they would find therein a remedy for all their ills." This was done ; it worked a cure, and the cross became a talisman from that time forth. Was the " beau- tiful man" a remembered description of Christ, or was it one of the " white men clothed in wool," of northern tradition, who were undoubtedly Norse explorers ? Respecting these latter, the Milicites, or Meliseets, tell of a visit of tall, pale strangers who drove away the red men, built houses of stone, swigged mighty draughts from horns, shouting as they drank, and were overwhelmed by an earth- quake that changed the course of the St. John River. The Micmacs — by some alleged to be the lost Beo- thuks of Newfoundland — tell of a woman's dream, long before Carder's landing, in which she saw an island floating toward the land with trees upon it, and creatures dressed in skins. Next day the island appeared in fact, but it was a ship ; the trees were masts, and the creatures were men who spoke in a strange tongue, making signs of friendship. One man, dressed in white, lived among them for a time, and tried to teach a new religion, but, although he found some listeners, the wise men refused to heed 41 Myths and Legends him, because the dream had been granted to a woman and not to a medicine-man. Unqualified praise can be given to the mission- aries of all sects and of no sect that have sought for the elevation of the red man, but they have some- times discovered that he was less of a savage than he looked. The conduct of Chief Joseph, of the Nez Perces, in the war so cruelly and unjustly waged against him, was admirable in its forbearance. In- stances of generosity and self-sacrifice are many. A Canadian clergyman, relating to a company of Blackfeet the measures common in civilized states for the care of orphaned children, explained that if his own children were left fatherless his prop- erty would be sold, or managed by an executor for their benefit, so that they might continue to secure board, clothing, and education. The Indians were both amused and astonished. " The white people are savages," said one. " When any people die in our camps and leave little children, we take them into our lodges. The best piece of buffalo meat we give to them. We clothe and train them. They are our bone and flesh. They have no father or mother, so we are all fathers and mothers. White people do not love their children. They have to be paid for loving orphans." The respect in which the aborigines hold their ancestors, at least when the latter are dead, is in contrast with the lack of honor that the dead sometimes have from the civilized. There is a cave at Mistassini 42 Beyond Our Borders that the Indians never approach closely, lest they should seem to spy on the ghosts of their fathers, who were buried there in other ages, and who still sit there, holding councils. And seldom do the Indians hear from the mis- sionaries an eloquence equal to their own. Listen to this prayer of a Piegan to a mountain manitou : " Hear, now, you Chief Mountain, you who stand foremost ; listen, I say, to the mourning of the people. Now the days are truly become evil, and are not as they used to be in ancient times. Bat you know : you have seen the days. Under your fallen garments the years lie buried. Then the days were full of joy. The buffalo covered the prairie, and the people were glad. Then they had warm dwellings, soft robes for covering, and the feasting was without end. Hear, now, you Moun- tain Chief. Listen, I say, to the mourning of the people. Their lodges and their clothing now are made of strange, thin stuff, and the long days come and go without the feast, for our buffalo are gone. The drum now is useless, for who would sing and dance while hunger gnawed him ? Hear, now, you who stand among the clouds. Pity, I say, your starving people. Give us back those happy days. Once more cover the prairie with real food, so that your children may live again. Hear, I say, the prayer of your unhappy people. Bring back those ancient days. Then will our prayers again be strong. You will be happy, and the aged will die content." 43 Myths and Legends A FEW MONSTERS IN common with other parts of the continent, and the seas that wash their coasts, the Do- minion and its waters have been peopled with strange creatures, some of them the more terrible because they evade sight, touch, definition, and bullets. Now and again the sea-serpent rears his head, snorting, from the brine, and puts for shore at a pace that shames our torpedo-boats, and elderly maidens at the watering-places convincingly resign themselves to hysterics. He — perhaps there is also a she, though it does not seem possible — usually proves to be a porpoise, a sunfish, a white whale, or an octopus; still, "you can't generally 'most always tell, sometimes," and one of the times might have been when he was not a porpoise, but the sea-serpent. The largest devil-fish known, taken on the Newfoundland coast, had a reach of forty feet, and there is no doubt about him, for he was pickled and carried to the States. Either of his arms would have made a more than respect- able snake. But all hope has not been abandoned of catching the veritable sea-serpent — the one with eyes like saucepans, with a grinning mouth set with stone-drill teeth, with a weedy mane, with stripes and spots more vivid than a mid-century fashion-plate, and with a braying voice like that of a mule or an agitator. Now and then he leaves his habitat and wallows overland to fresh water. He 44 Beyond Our Borders was seen, for instance, in Skiff Lake, New Bruns- wick, where he succeeded in stretching himself to a length of only thirty feet. Rattlesnake Islands, in Lake Erie, indicate by their name what desirable places they must have been to live away from, but the snakes that remain, if, indeed, there are any, are as nothing to what they were when the early explorers visited the group, carrying their imaginations with them ; for, said they, the islands bristled with a kind of snake that " blew from its mouth with great force a sub- tile wind," which whoso breathed must die. There were some rare birds in this country, too, beside the Indian thunder-birds that flashed ter- rible glances out of their eyes and made the heaven resound when they shook their iron wings. There was an eagle of portentous size that preyed on human beings when it lacked fawns and bear-cubs. They will show you, beside the deepest reach of the Ottawa, a cliff falling for hundreds of feet into the river, with no beach at its foot. It is Oiseau Rock, and to its top this eagle flew with a pappoose, the frantic mother climbing after it and bringing the child away in safety. This, by the bye, is a legend that is common the world over. It is a different sort of bird of which the Thlin- keets, of British Columbia, tell in their creation myth. This bird, Chethl, the Great Crow, is almost a deity. With his wings he beat back the rising waters. Then, when his uncle tried to kill 45 Myths and Legends him, he called on the floods and deluged the earth, flying up to heaven afterward, where he stuck his bill into a cloud and hung there till the water had gone down. At a later time he got hold of the three boxes in which were kept the sun, moon, and stars, wrenched the lids off, and let the con- tents shine into the frightened eyes of men. In all Canada you shall not find a creature so fearful as the giant Gougou, who lived on the St. Lawrence, at Miscou. A ship's mast in our day would barely have reached to his waist, and, saving that he had two eyes, he was a very Polyphemus. He would wade into the river when men were rowing or sailing past, pick them up by thumb and finger, put them into his sack, go ashore, and draw them out to eat at his leisure. The shrill whis- tling that he made sometimes put the canoe-men on their guard, and they would hurry in at some wooded cove until he had fed or gone to sleep be- fore they dared to resume their journey. The devil, from whose machinations men will ever pray to be delivered, is master of a hundred subtleties, and changes his form to cheat men's senses. We meet him in " Faust" as the black dog ; in " The Monk" as the terrific form with baleful eyes, bat's wings, and an air of malignant triumph ; we find him tempting some men and bullying others ; now he is the fiend, and anon the gentleman. But where else than in Canada will you find him working for the Church? St. Augustin, 46 Beyond Our Borders in the province of Quebec, is the one place on earth that he has favored in this fashion, and we are still in the dark as to why he did it. He took on the shape of a monster black horse, with the strength of ten usual horses in his thews, and hauled all the heavy stone for the foundations of the church that was built in that village in 1690. Was he looking for a chance to kick the priest ? Did he expect that a mason or two would mount his back, that he might rush into the St. Lawrence with them ? Did he in- tend to damage the foundations after he had helped to lay them, that the sacred edifice might tumble about the ears of his enemies ? Anyhow, he did the work, and did it well, and that is not the first time that his designs against mankind have failed. Belle Isle and Quirpon, in the icy strait between Newfoundland and Labrador, were peopled by so many devils that the French sailors would not go ashore unless they had crucifixes in their hands. There was a peculiar species of griffin, also, that was destructive, and that doubters of a later age assert to have been wolves, for as late as 1873 these animals were troublesome along the coasts of the strait, and several persons were killed by them. Possibly some of the sprites on Prince Edward's Island have four feet, because the mice are trouble- some there. There was a plague of these little animals in the seventeenth century, and one in Pictou in 1 81 5. They ate everything, stripping 47 Myths and Legends the fields bare ; then, for lack of other provision, they starved by thousands. Richmond Gulf, on the eastern side of Hudson Bay, was the abode of water spirits or some man- ner of evil creatures who vexed the waves so that they boiled and tumbled without a wind, and it was a sad thing for people in light canoes to get across those waters. At certain stages of the tide a great whirlpool was seen, and the creatures sat on the bottom, among the grinding stones, under the roaring vortex, waiting with upreached hands for the hapless canoeman who should be sucked be- low the sea, that they might feed on him. Before rowing through the narrow entrance the natives performed ceremonies to appease these evil ones, after which they dropped tobacco into the water, believing that the monsters would smoke it and be calmed and grateful long enough to enable the boat- men to reach shore in safety. In some quarters the ignes fatui, or will-o'-the- wisps, are lanterns carried in the hands of spirits or demons. At Grand Falls, New Brunswick, where it is claimed that these lights have actually been seen, the Indians declare them to be the un- easy souls of dead folks who are hunting for their bodies, which they desire to occupy once more. If you would be without fear of the goblin of the Jack-o'-lantern, in French Canada, you must stop squarely in his path and ask him, " On what day of the month falls Christmas?" 48 Beyond Our Borders The imp answers, in the Yankee fashion, by- asking, " Well, what day is it?" And if the traveller gives the date, the imp will fly before him, but if he does not remember, it were better that he had held his peace, for he will presently be torn in pieces. SOME NAMES IN the names of places we often find as great a puzzle as in the names of people, yet if we could go to the bottom of the mystery we might discover an incident or a faith of some account ; in fact, much history has been written in names, while a public temper or humor is often disclosed in the same way. In eastern Canada all the saints in the calendar, and some who do not belong there, have fastened their names to the French villages, record- ing the occupancy and rule of the land by a re- ligious folk. If we go west and find places called Hell Roaring Creek, Last Chance, Hardscrabble, Silver King, Whoop-Up, and that sort of thing, it indicates a people whose motives are less religious than material, and who succeed in getting fun out of difficulties. The devil has fared in the West as well as the saints in the East, in which more peaceful district others have had in a few cases to take the brunt of his unpopularity, for Devil's Head, New Brunswick, was named for a settler named Duval. Hard luck for Duval ! Old France and 4 49 Myths and Legends Old England have often been drawn upon, while the strong, quaint, often musical speech of the ab- origines is perpetuated in too few lakes and rivers. Anglicism of names sometimes results oddly, as in the conversion of Chapeau Dieu to Shapody Mountain, and of Portage du Rat to Rat Portage. Though the two latter are the same, yet locally the French rat stands for muskrat, and the same word in Eng- lish does not. Montreal is the Royal Mountain ; Smoky Cape, or Cap Enfume, is so called because of the mists that toss about it ; Quebec is " Quel bee !" (" What a cape !") that being the exclama- tion of its discoverers (unless it is true that there is an Indian word, Quebego, meaning narrow river), while at Ha-ha Bay the Frenchmen laughed with joy at sight of the green expanse after their voy- age up the Saguenay. We have forgotten what haunted Bleak House, where the commandant of Quebec once lived, but we know that Sauk de Matelot, in the same city, is so called because a sailor, who had been relieving at a tavern " the en- forced horrors of a long sobriety," leaped off to escape a troop of yellow giraffes and pink monkeys with horses' tails. Lachine, or La Chine, means China, because the St. Lawrence was first thought to be a northwest passage to that land. This is the old name, but in other cases such changes have been made by later comers that it is hard to recognize the originals. The Portuguese Baya Fondo is not so different from 5o Beyond Our Borders the Bay of Fundy, the Shubenacadie, haunted by ghosts of fishermen caught in its tides, is heard under the common " Shippenackety," we guess that Blow-me-down is Blomidon, but who would sup- pose that Acadie was the Micmac word Quoddy ? In fact, some believe that the name was borrowed from the other side of the sea, to denote the dis- covery of a New-World Arcadia. The turbulent Newfoundlanders, who, being mostly Celtic, are thorns in the sides of the Cana- dian and English governments, have not recorded in their names the fires, the riots, the shootings, the lurings to wreck, the extermination of the Boe- thuks, or other incidents that have made the history of their island exciting, and the traveller wonders what may have been the original meanings of Ex- ploits, Topsail, Killigrew's, Joe Batt's Arm, Seldom- come-by, Little-seldom-come-by, Fogo, Brigus, Hell Hill, Quiddy Viddy, Bally Haly, Maggoty Cove, Heart's Content, Bay of Despair, Dead Islands, and Rose Blanche. Because Cartier happened to reach it in a time of sultry weather, we have the Baie des Chaleurs. There is little doubt that Stanstead, province of Quebec, is named after one of the three Stansteads in England, yet it is alleged that the surveyors who laid off the township were a drunken lot, and were often heard calling to their chainmen, and even to their theodolites, to " stan' stead' " (stand steady), when it was their own legs that were out of plumb. 5i Myths and Legends And, apropos of thirst, More-Rum Brook, in Yar- mouth County, Nova Scotia, has been a name of dread to prohibitionists, and is likely to be changed lo Smith's " Crick" as soon as they can acquire suf- ficient influence, as in its present form it is wicked. Sundry years ago, when a surveyor was going over this region, his chain-bearers and others constantly clamored for strong waters, finally refusing to budge until they had some grog. The surveyor had sent to a distance for the rum, and told his reprehensible associates to drink from the brook until they got it. That is how it came to be More-Rum Brook. In upper Lake Huron lies the chain of Manitou- lins, large islands now occupied by graziers and farmers, but formerly a favorite visiting-place of the Indians. They never abode there long, for they looked on the islands as dwelling-places of the spirits of the earth, water, and air, spirits that required reverence and propitiation, and they dared not attempt familiarity. Manitoulin means spirit- land, or land of the gods. Manitoba, likewise, preserves the name of the Manitou, or Great Spirit. That name applied originally to Lake Manitoba, whose waters the Indians believed to be stirred by the spirit. Moose Jaw is only a contraction of " Place- where-the- white-man-mended-his-cart- wheel -with- the-jawbone-of-a-moose,' , which was thought to be too numerous a name for busy people. Calling River commemorates an echo, and Pipestone River 52 Beyond Our Borders refers to the material from which the red men make their ceremonial pipes. Pie Island and the Sleep- ing Giant, known to voyagers on Lake Superior, have reference only to the outlines of those heights, but the Petits Ecrits was so called because of the picture-writings found on the face of the rock, representing men, animals, and canoes cut in the lichen. West of the Wild-Cat Hills Ghost River flows past the column-like mountain of Devil's Head. Old maps call the river Dead Man's Creek. The Assiniboins are responsible for both names, since they declare it to be haunted by the ghost of an old chief who rides up and down its banks on a horse. Devil's Lake, near Banff, was a resort of malignant spirits, and Cascade River, its outlet, was the scene of a murder in which the victim's head was struck from his shoulders. A cave on the Bow near Canmore is haunted by a spirit, and is held in much regard by the natives. Near Banff is Stony Squaw Mountain, thus called from the tradition that when an old man of the Stony tribe lay ill and helpless in his lodge at the foot of this height, his old wife took his weapons and did a man's work as hunter, killing enough big-horns to feed them both until he recovered. Dr. James Hector, exploring the Canadian Rockies in 1857, was kicked by his horse in the shadow of Mount Stephen. Hence we have Kicking Horse Pass. The name Wapta, applied to the stream that flows through it, means only river. Wait-a-Bit Creek S3 Myths and Legends was so called by the first explorers, who were con- stantly fetched up with a short turn by a brier that grows thickly along its shores. When caught by the thorns, the victims called to their companions to " Wait a bit." The Arctic-looking Hermit Mountain on the north side of Rogers' Pass takes its name from a shape of stone far up under the sky. It looks like a cowled hermit talking to a dog. Close by is Cheops, recalling the Egyptian pyramid by its form as well as its name. Mount Grizzly explains itself, and Asulkan means wild goat. Sibilants multiply as we near the Pacific, for the Siwash — probably a corruption of Sauvage — inter- sperse many j's in their weak, choking, clicking language, as we find in Spuzzum, Spatsum, Scuzzy, Snohomish, Squallyamish, Shuswap, Sicamous, Spal- lumsheen, Sumas, Skagit, Similkameen, Osyoos, Spokane, Semiamoo, Swinonish, Stillaguamish, Nooksak, and Snoqualmie. These uncouth names often have agreeable meanings, however. Lee's Post, on Pincher Creek, suffered so from the cold that its name came to be Freeze Out. Slide-Out, on Belly River, was convenient to hiding-places to which traders in unlawful whiskey " slid out" when the mounted police approached, and at Stand-Off the traders kept a band of marauding Indians at bay. Polly Cow's Island, in Katchevvanook Lake, is named for an Indian girl who is buried there. Handsome Jack, an Otonabee River Indian, had courted her, but, believing that she was not strong 54 Beyond Our Borders enough to do his housework, he married a more buxom damsel, and Polly pined into her grave. Juan de Fuca, the old Greek pilot, found the strait that bears his name in I 592, but for a century or more thereafter this region was half mythical. Bacon thought it a safe place for his Atlantis, and Swift for his land of giants, Brobdingnag. The old Indian, Spanish, and Russian names were com- placently wiped off from the map by Mr. Van- couver, who fixed his own name on a great island, while Puget Sound and Mount Baker celebrate a couple of his shipmates. Mount Tacoma was called Mount Rainier to flatter an Englishman who never saw it. Captain Gray, of Boston, was leaving Puget Sound as Vancouver entered it in the Discovery, but any names that the Americans ap- pended to the islands, capes, and mountains were not allowed to stay. TROUBLES ON THE ST. LAWRENCE THE St. Lawrence is a river of many myste- ries and troubles. Blood has often mingled with its waters, the blood of French and English, Christian and savage, soldier and martyr. From the lakes to the gulf its surface has been vexed by the keels of fighting fleets, and its shores have echoed to the roar of cannon. So late as 1838 it was a scene of hostilities, for in that year the Brit- ish ship Sir Robert Peel was burned among the 55 Myths and Legends Thousand Islands by a harum-scarum band of men who wanted to establish a republic in Canada. " Bill" Johnson, leader of this company, kept out of sight for some time after, his daughter Kate row- ing him from one island to another, and keeping him in food during the search that the Canadians made for him. Part of the time he was at the Devil's Oven. It is told of Johnson that he was trapped on Wells Island by Captain Boyd, of the English army. " I'm fairly caught," he confessed, " and you've had a long row after me, so you must be thirsty. Take a drink and rest yourself." The officer dropped upon a bench and took a good tug at the outlaw's flask, while Johnson lighted his pipe and, holding the coal in a tongs over a barrel, remarked, in a matter-of-fact way, " Shall I go with you, or will you stay and go to hell with me ? This barrel is full of powder." The captain excused himself, and scrambled for his boats along with his men, for Johnson had put the coal on the barrel- head, and it was eating into the wood. In a minute there was a big explosion, and a great smoke rolled from the cave-mouth. Captain Boyd hoped that it meant the last of Johnson ; but that reprobate was out of sight in a new hiding-place before the oars of the red-coats were fairly in the water. These islands have been famed in Cooper's " Pathfinder" and in the verse of Thomas Moore, who also celebrates the village of Sainte Anne in his " Boat Song." Near Prescott is the windmill, 56 Beyond Our Borders now a light-house, where a company of " patriots," under lead of a Polish exile, held out against Can- ada for several days, in the belief that the prov- ince needed to be " liberated" from something or somebody, while many Americans sat watching on their own side of the river, occasionally saying " Hooray !" There are tales of perilous descents by fugitives and Indians of the rapids that tourists view languidly from steamer-decks. Even now the habitant on its banks shudders when an owl cries, for he remembers the stories told by his grandmother, in the firelight, of feux follets and loups garous, which are demons that watch for the souls of the unrepentant and the unbaptized. On the pass of the Long Sault, on the river's left bank, occurred one of the stoutest fights in history. Learning that a large war-party of Iroquois had set off to destroy the infant colonies of Montreal and Quebec, the Sieur des Ormaux, better known by his baptismal name of Dollard, hurried away to stop the advance, and at least gain time for prepa- ration. He had only sixteen white men and two faithful Hurons, and his shelter was of the hastiest and slightest ' yet for three days of hunger, thirst, and sleeplessness this Spartan band withstood the assault of at least five hundred savages, greedy for their blood, and, although every man in the defences died, the Indians were so convinced of the futility of war against so brave a people that they went back to their homes. In the stillness of the night 57 Myths and Legends is it the rumor of the rapids, making the Long Sault, that is heard, or is it the sound of battle that nature would forget but cannot while evil spirits dwell on earth ? Nor have all the wicked spirits run away from the travellers with red guide-books, nor hidden among the trees when they saw the train or steamer coming, nor covered their ears or glared in envy when they heard some frenzied stranger making remarks into a dilatory telephone. Old residents near the Cape of Crows will tell you that the black- birds that flap and squall among the mists are devils and bring bad luck to sailors, while there are big- ger devils in the clouds that swirl around the cape, and devils in the earth likewise, for this region is occasionally shaken by earthquake. In 1663 an earthquake along the north shore was attributed by the Indians near Montreal to the return of the spirits of their ancestors from the happy hunting- grounds. The poor souls wanted a change of diet. As there was not game enough for both the living and the dead, the Indians fired their muskets to scare their parents back again. And, sure enough, the dead and good Indians ceased from troubling after a few months, and went back to the Sand Hills. That was a year of great distress to the people along the river. Every time the earth shook some of them remembered that they had not said their prayers, and others hurried to confess that they had sold fire-water to the Indians. The frightened 58 Beyond Our Borders ones were either driven to drink or turned from all but enough of it. There were many land-slides, and the river ran white as far as Tadousac. " Me- teors, fiery-winged serpents, and ghastly spectres were seen in the air ; roarings and mysterious voices sounded on every side." The Pointe aux Trembles and Les Eboulements preserve in their names the record of these quakes, while, for strange reasons, the Isle of Orleans has been full of gob- lins ever since. The Montagnais tell of a giant, Outikon, who, being evil, fled before the cross of the missionaries from Les Islets Machins, where another cannibal monster succeeded him, and found a home at Lake Mistassini, where the Nashkapiouts live, who never pray and never wash ; and to show his rage at Christians he stamps his feet every now and again, shaking the hills to their foundations. It used to be said that there was a volcano on the Height of Land, south of Hudson Bay, and that the earth- quakes followed its eruption. The various saints who are invoked on such oc- casions do not keep the imps from congregating about the Pointe de Tous les Diables in its glooms and storms. Behind this cape is Carder's land of gold and rubies, peopled by white men clothed in wool. (Legendary vikings?) Farther north is a race that frightened back the first explorers, a peo- ple who had only one leg apiece and not a stomach among them all. They lived on scenery. Better 59 Myths and Legends such than some of the more usual red men of a later date. There were the Hurons and Senecas, for example, who, after living in peace together at Hochelaga for years, suddenly fell to cutting one an- other's weasands and barbering one another's hair. This was a little before Champlain's arrival, and the traditionary reason for it is that a Seneca chief had refused to allow his son to marry a Huron girl. In high wrath at this slight, the young woman prom- ised herself to any one who should kill the old man, and on these terms she was won by a young brave of her own tribe ; but in the war that followed the Hurons were nearly exterminated. And what shadowy craft beat about the turbulent river, with its sea width of mouth, in night and storm, or flit among the fantastic pictures of the mirage ! There is the Flying Dutchman, who has been known to put in among the bays in the access of a fearful thirst, and sail away again, gnashing his stomach with his fists and talking improper lan- guage. And there is Roberval, who ascended the Saguenay and never came down in the flesh. He, too, skims over the river, against the wind, and with no wind. And Henry Hudson, abandoned by mu- tineers, with his son and six faithful sailors, in his open boat, amid the icy waters that bear his name in mocking compensation for his suffering, — does he not work his way up the St. Lawrence when, on every twentieth year, he sets off to hold revel in his beloved Catskills ? In autumn the giant rock 60 Beyond Our Borders of Perce, through whose now fallen arches sloops used to sail, looks down on a phantom ship that has been cruising up and down the bay since 171 1. It is one of the ships of Admiral Hovenden Walker that was hurled in a gale against Cap d'Espoir, — ignorantly yet fitly Englished into Cape Despair. Walker had captured an old sea-dog, one Jean Pa- radis, and had ordered him to guide his ships to Quebec, that he might surprise the French in that stronghold. Paradis stoutly refused, and in the at- tempt to ascend the river not only the phantom bark but eight transports were smashed on the Isle of Eggs, and a thousand red-coats slept on the bot- tom that night. This ghostly ship had the cap- tain's wife on board, and as it strikes the rock an officer and a woman in white are seen at the bow, clasped in each other's arms, while the air is filled with wailing as the form of the vessel cracks and fills. The rock itself, three hundred and fifty feet high, has its own " haunt," — a water wraith who climbs to the top and cries among the flocks of sea- birds. Something is remembered of old Gamache, the wrecker, who has not troubled mariners much, it is true, since they found him dead in his cabin on the Isle of Wrecks, but who had been seen enter- taining the devil off Anticosti, and who when chased by government cutters appeared to envelop his boat and himself in blue flame and dance off" across the river, regardless of call or shot. 61 Myths and Legends More dreaded than these spirits is the woman of the o'er-kind eyes. She, too, affects the region of the Perce Rock, and appears in the twilight putting off from shore in a light boat, rowed with a sin- gularly noiseless stroke by a man whose face is never clearly seen. She asks a passing captain to give her fare as far as Quebec, and, as these river- men are seldom so pressed that they cannot slack up for a passenger, the skipper backs his mainsail and takes the woman aboard, while the ferryman who has brought her rows away into the mist. She is queerly dressed, and wears a blood-red scarf, — one that is yet no redder than her lips. And immedi- ately the woman begins to make eyes at the captain. Her interest seldom fails of a return, for a tender- ness toward the sex is a fatal weakness in sailors, and soon the two are deep in talk in the shadow of the sail. Whether it is that the captain does not see the green light in her eyes, the cat-like gleam that sends a shiver through the crew, or whether the vessel goes wide of her course because all eyes are on the woman, it certainly happens that before eight bells have gone for midnight on passing ves- sels the ship is pounding to pieces on a reef and with a shrill laugh the woman has disappeared. 62 Beyond Our Borders AMERICAN ELEPHANTS THIRTY years ago buffalo fed up and down our plains for thousands of miles, the herds sometimes a league across and seven in length. Now these great animals are practically extinct, — slaugh- tered for the amusement of " sporting" men, who left them to rot on the earth and the Indians to hunger for lack of buffalo meat. Not in like way, nor from mere love of blood, yet even more com- pletely have our elephants been killed. Elephants ? Ay, truly. Some of the largest, strongest, most savage of the tribe had their home in this Western world during the age of men. Their skeletons have been found in our marshes, and the separate teeth and bones were a cause of dispute and wonderment among the wise men of recent centu- ries. Cotton Mather, discoverer of mares'-nests and witches, mentions a thigh-bone seventeen feet long ! and Governor Dudley told him that it pertained to a giant " for whom the flood only could prepare a funeral ; and without doubt he waded as long as he could keep his head above the clouds, but must at length be confounded, with all other creatures." Afterward it was decided that the bones must have belonged to a colossal lion that ate two or three horses at a meal and roared so when he was hungry that the earth shook. Not until Cuvier's time was it agreed that the monster was a species of elephant, that it was extinct, and that it would have eaten 63 Myths and Legends neither man nor horses when alive. Old beliefs die hard, all the same, and it is hardly more than fifty years since a Southern " scientist" fixed up the bones of a mastodon in the likeness of a human being, raised it on its hind legs, covered its head with raw hide, and proclaimed it a giant. Another mastodon was grotesquely put together and advertised as the Biblical leviathan, which was supposed to anchor itself to trees by its curved tusks and sleep on the face of the waters. On the Pacific slope the bones of mastodons are found in the gravels, mingled with human bones and stone arrow-heads, showing that men and mastodons lived together, for the elephan- tine species survived here later than in Europe. In Mexico not only are the bones found, but there are sculptures in which the elephant is represented, and our own Indians portray it in the forms of pipes and in drawings scratched on stone. In Louisiana the red men said that crows had gone to feed on the flesh of an immense animal that had died near the stream they called, because of this incident, Carrion Crow Creek. A mastodon's thigh was exhibited to Cortes as that of a giant, one of a race of evil men whom the Aztecs had succeeded in destroying, after long years of war. In South America similar traditions existed. On the Parana it was said that the creature burrowed in the bluffs, but in the pam- pas of the Argentine states it was a Titan again, and " Field of Giants" and " Hill of the Giants" are names that occur there. 64 Beyond Our Borders The Delawares had a legend of a wholesale de- struction of bear, deer, elk, buffalo, and other ani- mals by the mastodons, which they called " big buffalo ;" but before the mischief had gone far the Great Spirit grasped his lightning, stepped out of heaven, the prints of his feet being left on a rock at Big Bone Lick, and killed the monsters right and left. One old bull was tougher than the lightning. As the bolts fell on his forehead he shook them off, and for some time he stood, daring the Great Spirit. At length a stroke fell on his side, and smarting and trumpeting he galloped off toward the northwest, clearing all the rivers and the great lakes in power- ful leaps, and there in Alberta, or British Columbia, he still lives, with a few subdued associates. Be- side these creatures, the natives say, all other animals are as insects ; their skin is proof against arrows, and they have " an arm" that they use as we do ours, — of course, a trunk. Still farther north, in the re- gion of the great, lonely lakes, we hear that the fathers of the Indian tribes had to build their houses on piles in the water, like the ancient dwellings of the Swiss, in order to escape assault from the ele- phants, who ravaged the whole country. 65 Myths and Legends HIDDEN GOLD WAS ever a place or a time where and when the people did not believe in hidden wealth ? There is a peculiar charm in the rare, the hinted, and the unseen that leads some classes to conceal even their wisdom, while others reveal it only to the initiated. In common with the United States, the British provinces were hiding-places for the gold of pirates, of misers, of adventurers, and of fugitives, and ever and anon it enters some head, that might be better occupied, to search for this treasure. Money is spent in the seeking, but little is taken in return. Hard-minded men say the rea- son is that there is none to be taken. Certain who are more open to conviction declare the reason to be a pernicious activity of ghosts and goblins in guarding the hoard, for it was a practice with pi- rates to kill one of their comrades and bury him atop of the chest or keg of doubloons, that his spirit might haunt the spot and scare away intruders. Any self-respecting pirate of this nineteenth century would be so disgusted by this treachery of his ship- mates that when he came up out of the sand and found himself dead he would bid all his comrades go hang — as they would be sure to do anyway — and would trudge away to a warmer clime and more congenial occupations. Captain Kidd, who really did bury one box of valuables on Gardiner's Island, New York, where it was found, was consequently 66 Beyond Our Borders suspected of having salted the whole Atlantic coast with crowns and cob dollars, but if so he died keeping his secret. A rumor that a part of this wealth was deposited on the shore near Halifax has created some anxious guesses as to where. Probably the most touching spectacle of confi- dence exhibited to the gaze of nations was that of- fered by the people who dug over Oak Island, near Chester, Nova Scotia, in search of this treasure of Kidd's, for they went down into the earth a hun- dred feet. As if busy pirates had time to dig graves of half that depth for their earnings ! But they found masonry and timber, and do not guess their meaning. A few miles away, near the Dutch town of Lu- nenburg, are the Ovens, — sea-worn caves in a cliffof gold-bearing rock, — that were much likelier hiding- places for treasure, because a great fear of the Ovens has existed since the time when an Indian, being swept into the biggest of them, was carried to the interior of the earth and presently cast up among the Tuskets, with his geography mixed and his shins bruised. Dark Cove and Money Cove, on Grand Manan, are reputed burial-places for a part of the Kidd gains. Dead Man's Cove, sometime known as such to the people about Grand Pre, was one of Kidd's banks, and in after-years an effort was made to res- urrect the treasure, a fortune-teller having given minute directions where to find it. It was a calm, 67 Myths and Legends clear night of moonshine when the seekers, after long work, struck their spades against a crock, and, opening the lid, felt their hearts dance within them, for it was full to the brim with Spanish dollars. As they plunged deeper to free the pot from the close- packed clay, one of them found that the iron had pierced a skull, — the skull of the murdered watcher. Almost on the instant there fell a bolt of lightning, accompanied by an appalling roar of thunder. A blast of wind blew out the lanterns and tipped one man over, so that work ceased then and there. It is said that if one of the seekers is killed on the spot the spell will be lifted. Some gold is alleged to have been taken from a farm on Campobello by adventurers who promised to share it with the owner of the property if they found it. Perhaps they didn't find it. Anyway, they never happened around to share it. Then there was the Frenchman Clairieux, who buried several boxes of money on Grand Island, in Niagara River, where a handful of ancient pieces was found two centuries later, and Fontenoy, another Frenchman, who buried his money — he had made it by cheating the Indians — in a brass ket- tle at Presque Isle, near Detroit. At the ancient forges on the St. Maurice River — which are the oldest smelters of iron in America, unless that dis- tinction can be proved for the smelter at Prin- cipio, Maryland — the French authority was repre- sented by a governor who lived in a stately chateau 68 Beyond Our Borders near by. When the English took Canada they heard rumors of the manufacture of shot and can- non in these forges, and forthwith a detachment of red-coats appeared before the place, demanding the surrender of everything and everybody. The governor was absent at the time, but Demoiselle Poulin, a young relative, who spoke for him, threw the keys into the river rather than give them up. The English then entered the chateau and the forge by force ; but it is said that the delay caused by Demoiselle Poulin's obduracy was long enough to enable the servants and workmen to bury many of the valuables about the premises. So, when dim lights and shadowy shapes are seen about the ruins, the traveller knows that the old governor and his domestics are trying to discover where they hid their gold. It is sad that the great block of lapis lazuli should have disappeared, for it was " worth ten crowns an ounce." It lay two or three miles off the island of Grand Manan, and was a guide to mariners aiming to enter St. John River. An offi- cer, who broke off the piece that was valued as above, and the veracious Charlevoix, are authority for this rock. It is worth dredging to the surface, maybe. And as Mount Washington had its carbuncle that lighted the clouds with a ruddy glow at night, so the great cliff of six hundred feet that guards the entrance to the Basin of Minas has its enormous 69 Myths and Legends Diamond of Blomidon. It is seen flashing from afar, but every attempt of seekers to wrest the gem from the mocking spirits of the crag has been a failure. Copper you find there, and agate, ame- thysts, garnets, and beautiful zeolites, but the dia- mond dims as you approach it, and close at hand fades utterly from view. Wreck, more often -than Piracy, threw wealth on the shores of Sable Island, " land of sand and ruin and gold," " the charnel-house of North America." Gales uncover the skeletons of cast- aways, but the winds and waves have buried only the more deeply the crocks of doubloons and pieces of eight that perhaps the high-seas-men did not put here. Sarcastic, indeed, is the name of " French Gardens," as applied to this spot of blight, where the forty convicts sent as slaves to the new colony were set ashore by De la Roche, to await a call that never came, except from death. Only a dozen escaped this call, and five years later they were taken off, a shaggy lot, half turned to beasts in ap- pearance, if not in nature. It is guessed that the only available riches of the island are in its berries and wild pigs. On Fisguard Street, Victoria, British Columbia, stands a dilapidated house of two stories and a ghost story. Who or what the ghost is the people are forgetting ; but they recall the Australian who bought it twenty-five years ago when he arrived from the gold-fields of the antipodes, and it is 70 Beyond Our Borders alleged that some of them prowl about the yard when the weather keeps the police in-doors ; for, in spite of its ghost, its spiders, and its rats, the place has a rare interest for them. There is Aus- tralian gold in the yard, — a pot of it. The Aus- tralian had an ignorant horror of banks, bonds, stock, mortgages, and the usual interest-paying in- vestments, so he committed his wealth to the earth, taking it up and increasing it from time to time. When he died he enjoined his wife never to reveal its hiding-place. She refused to sell or lease the property. Hence the visits of folks with shovels and divining-rods. When gold-hunters went to the rich fields of the Klondike they heard reports from the Indians of a " Too-Much-Gold Creek," whose sands were yel- lower than those of Pactolus ; but the natives them- selves had forgotten, and the others, though they moved the name to another stream, never found just where the water flowed. It has taken its place on the maps of other days, — the maps on which one finds the islands most affected by mermaids and the seas vexed by serpents and krakens. 7i Myths and Legends HOW ONE BEAR LOST HIS LIFE IN the folk-lore of certain tribes Brother Bear is a gentle and sagacious creature, who fre- quents the settlements with the same freedom as if he were a dog. He slides on the ice with the chil- dren, carries them on his back, and is glad of scraps after dinner, though he prefers fruit, vegetables, and honey to meat, when he can get these dain- ties. The Indians encouraged his friendship be- cause he kept their camp free from refuse, and also drove off the wolves that so greatly vexed the maritime provinces. Indeed, there is a claim that bears have never been killed for food in the East, even when food of all kinds was made scarce by raiding armies of French and English. This may have been true among the Passamaquoddies, whose totem was the bear, and who refuse to sit at a table where bear's meat is served, although even they may be egged on to self-defence, as Nick Lewi was when he was overhauled by a bear who had stepped into four separate wild-cat traps and had one on each paw, which enabled him to box tre- mendously, and who succumbed only after repeated stabbings. It does not often happen to a hunter to get off so easily in an encounter with a wild animal as a Melicite Indian did in the New Brunswick woods when he met a bear. He was a calm person, as one must be who lives by the hunt, and these Indians 72 Beyond Our Borders have a splendid nerve. The white man thinks he does pretty well when he brings down his prey at a hundred yards, and he wants a magazine rifle and dynamite bullets at that. Until recently the savage did his killing at such short range, with knives and spears and arrows, that if he missed his aim he might die for it. But this adventure occurred in later times, and is best told in the Indian's own words : " One time I go huntum moose. Night come dark, rain and snow come fast. No axe for makum wigwam. Gun wet, no getum fire. Me very tired. Me crawl into large hollow tree. Find plenty room. Almost begin sleep. Bimeby me feelum hot wind blow on my face. Me know hot bear's breath. He crawl into log, too. I takum gun. She no go. I think me all same gone, — all eat up. Then me thinkum my old snuff-box. I take some snuff and throwum in bear's face and he run out. Not very much likeum, I guess. Me lay still all night. He no come again. Every leetle while, every time, bear he go ■ o-o-O-ME !' sneezum over and over, great many times. Morning come, me fixum gun and shootum, dead. He no more sneezum, no more this time." 73 Myths and Legends THE ISLE OF DEMONS STRENGTH and courage were often exhibited by the women who were among the early im- migrants to this country, — delicate creatures reared at the court of France, some of them, and knowing little but luxury and ease until they came to these shores. A typical " new woman" of that kind was Marguerite de Roberval, niece of the harsh old Sieur de Roberval, " the little king of Vimeu," who came here to possess the land and flog the natives of it into the religion of love and charity. The girl had plighted her troth to a young cavalier who had enlisted among the adventurers on this expedi- tion. It was of course impossible that their love- making should escape notice, and old Roberval was so incensed about it that when his ship arrived at the Isle of Demons (Quirpon, near Newfoundland) he set Marguerite ashore there with her nurse, and only four guns with their ammunition to support life, while he held on his way ; but the lover sprang from the deck with gun in hand and armor on his back and swam to shore, where the three exiles ruefully or vengefully watched the departing ship. By their united efforts a hut was built, and here a babe was born to Marguerite. For a little time their state was not so ill. Then came the cold, the game grew scarce, privation and anxiety told upon them. The cavalier was first to go ; next the in- fant ; lastly, the nurse. Marguerite buried them. 74 Beyond Our Borders She was alone. Some women would have resigned themselves to despair, and truly this woman had little to live for. Not only was she without human com- pany, but imps and spirits walked over the island, peered out of the mist, whispered in the night, called and whistled in the gale. These evil ones had horned heads and wings and " howled like a crowd in the market-place." At last a sail appeared. She heaped her little fire with brush and made a smoke, which struck terror to the crew, for this was the Isle of Demons, and the smoke was of the eternal burning. And so they sailed away. Hoping, despite her grief and misery, Marguerite fished and hunted, skinning the animals that she shot, for clothes, and keeping her hut stanch against the gales, praying when the fiends shook the door and muttered strange words at the window. In the third winter another sail appeared, and again she heaped up brush and sent a column of smoke aloft. This time the crew were scared, especially when they saw the woman's figure gesticulating franti- cally on a rock, but the officers forced them to anchor and make a landing. They were honest fishermen, and never imagined at the first that this brown and lonely creature had been an ornament of the gayest society in Europe, but they took her back to France with them, strong, sedate, resource- ful now, and she regained her kin. If she felt any bitterness toward her uncle she was able to take a satisfaction in hearing shortly of his failure.. 75 Myths and Legends He went swelling to the New World as " Lord of Norembega, Viceroy and Lieutenant-General in Canada, Hochelaga, Saguenay, Newfoundland, Belle Isle, Carpunt, Labrador, the Great Bay, and Baccalaos," with five shiploads of convicts in his train, this precious company having been assembled to develop the country and convert the red men. Roberval was a hard master ; perhaps he needed to be, and he so ill-treated his rag-tag following, giving them scanty food and plenty of hard work at forts, mills, and shops, shooting, hanging, and beating women as well as men for the least offences, that they mutinied, and his life often hung in the balance. Presently the food gave out, and the proud Sieur was fain to eat fish and roots boiled in oil, — he who had dined with kings. Scurvy set in, and the wretches died pitifully, yet unpitied. Roberval was recalled, and according to one report he was struck down at night by an unknown hand before the Church of the Innocents, in Paris ; but others believe that he re- covered and made a second venture for wealth and power, his cruel, haughty spirit again defeating its own aim, so that he died, leaving none to mourn him. As he went to his death among the black and lonely reaches of the Saguenay, did he shrink aghast at the memory of his misdeeds ? Mingled with the sounds of wreck and storm that faded on his ear, did he hear the moans and calls of the strange creatures on the Isle of Demons to whose keeping he had com- mitted the girl he should have loved and sheltered ? 76 Beyond Our Borders THE FIGURE IN SMOKY HUT SABLE ISLAND, haunt of convicts, pirates, and such wild creatures, who were landed there centuries ago, is a mere bank in the solitary northern seas that froth against it, tearing and rebuilding its shore, and in high tide threatening to engulf it. There are now no inhabitants except the light-keepers, for so many crimes were com- mitted there in the old days, especially by wreckers, that permanent settlement was prohibited. It is still a graveyard of ships, over one hundred and fifty having met their end there, but castaways run no risk of murder. Strange tales are told there of a heroic friar, of one of the fugitive judges who con- demned Charles I. to his death, of men left alone to perish who became like wolves, and if a sailor had to choose a spot to be wrecked upon, this key of sand is one of the last to which he would con- sent. In the eighteenth century the British transport ship Amelia, with treasure and a guard, went to pieces on the sands of this dread spot, and few sur- vived the disaster. Those who did succeed in getting to the mainland told of villains who had shown false beacons and robbed and killed the crew, and their strange tale was promptly investi- gated by government. Captain Torrens, of the navy, was despatched to the scene of the wreck to gain all possible knowledge of it, and, if might be, 77 Myths and Legends to apprehend all who were engaged in the crime. He found the island without trouble. The trouble began as soon as he had found it, for his ship ran her nose into it, and bade fair to stay, although she was eventually freed from the sand and kept off at anchor. No inhabitants were found, except wild hogs, which the sailors were glad to shoot for food. Going over this almost desert in search of relics that might furnish some clue to the out- laws, Captain Torrens arrived at the squalid shel- ter known, probably because of its ineffective ven- tilation, as the " smoky hut," and pushed open the door. To his astonishment, the place was occu- pied. In the dim light he saw a woman, young, fair, with pain and sadness in her face. She seemed to have but just been rescued from the sea, for her long hair and her simple white dress clung to her figure, and were as if dripping with moisture. " Beg pardon, madame," said the captain, peer- ing under his hand to see into the dark, for the sun had set in a threatening sky, " but are there any others here ?" The woman remained motionless, with eyes fixed on his own, and said no word. " Is it possible that a ship has come ashore and I did not see it? Pray, how long have you been here ? Can I do anything for you ?" The woman raised her hand. The first finger was gone, and its stump was mashed and bloody. " Ah, you have been hurt. Wait till I bring 78 Beyond Our Borders my surgeon." And he turned to go back to his ship. Hardly had he taken five paces before the woman had slipped out at the door — a thistle-down floating in the air could not have been lighter — and ran away. Happening to look back at the moment, the captain saw her. " Now I under- stand," he said to himself. " The poor creature has been crazed by her suffering and by her life alone in this place," and calling after, he begged her to stop. She did not slack her pace, which was marvellously swift and easy, and, fearing that she might do some violence to herself, he gave chase, telling her that she had no reason for alarm, and asking her to accept the shelter of his cabin. The woman ran until she reached a pond in the cen- tre of the island, where she seemed to dive, for, although he searched carefully through the reeds and long grass, Captain Torrens discovered no trace of her, not even a bent blade to show that she had passed. Going back in perplexity, he was the more bewildered on seeing at the door of the "smoky hut" the same woman that had disap- peared at the edge of the pond. There was some- thing uncanny in it. He began to wish that he were not alone. Yet he strode resolutely to the shanty. A wan gleam of twilight rested on the still face of the woman, who looked fixedly upon him. He staggered back and became almost as pale as she. " Lady Copeland ! It is you !" he exclaimed, in a strained whisper. 79 Myths and Legends The woman nodded. " I thought you were dead." Again the woman nodded. " You were killed here — by the wreckers ?" he gasped. She nodded again. " I understand. They threw your body into the pond ? Horrible ! And your ringer ? Yes, yes. I see. They cut it off to get your rings. Rest assured I will do all I can for your repose. Shall I search for your body and take it to England? No? Then my chaplain shall read the service at the pond. And I will hunt down the villain who robbed you, and send your jewels to your family." Again the figure nodded, and the captain could see that a peaceful smile had come upon the face. The wind drove up a little cloud of sand. He closed his eyes for an instant to shield them, and when he opened them he was alone. Hastening back on shipboard, he fetched out the chaplain, had prayers said, weighed anchor, and, acting on such clues as he had gathered, he set sail for Hali- fax, where he recovered from a money-lender the gems that had been stolen from Lady Copeland, despatched them to her family, then proceeding along the Labrador coast he caught the wrecker who had slain her and hanged him at the yard-arm. 80 Beyond Our Borders THE SHADOW OF HOLLAND COVE IN 1764 came the first white settler to Holland Cove, Prince Edward Island, — a surveyor, one Captain Holland, who gave his name to the place where he had set up his habitation. With him presently appeared a woman, of Micmac origin on her mother's side, but her father was a French count, belike, for she was tall, distinguished, and in mind and bearing unlike the majority of half- breeds. Racine was the name whereby she was best known. Of her history the captain's asso- ciates knew nothing, or wisely professed to know nothing. During the winter after his arrival the captain was frequently absent on hunting and sur- veying trips, and on one of these excursions he was gone so long beyond the appointed time that Ra- cine undertook to cross the cove on the ice, to see if she might not find some token of him or meet him the sooner. Such, at least, was the suppo- sition. It was an unwise venture, for the ice was infirm, and, falling between two floes, she disap- peared. Holland mourned her loss on his return, and attempts were made to find her body, but with- out avail. On a still night in the following summer the coxswain of the captain's party was wakened by a sound of low voices in the sitting-room, and, know- ing that all hands had turned in, his curiosity was roused. Lighting a tallow dip, he peered into the 6 8l