The subject was here changed, however, by Mr. Melody's reminding them that this day was the time they had set to visit the _Morgue_ and the _Catacombs_, for which an order had been procured. These had been the favourite themes for some days; and there had been the greatest impatience expressed to go and see the naked dead bodies of the murdered and _felo-de-ses_ daily stretched out in the one, and the five millions of skulls and other human bones that are laid up like cobhouses under great part of the city. _Bobasheela_ had described to them the wonders of this awful place, which he had been in on a former occasion, and Daniel had read descriptions from books while the Indians had smoked many a pipe; but when the subject was mentioned on this occasion, there were evident proofs instantly shown that some influence had produced a different effect upon their minds, and that they were no longer anxious to go. M. Vattemare, in speaking of the Catacombs a few days before, had said that about a year ago two young men from the West Indies came to Paris, and, getting an order to visit the Catacombs, entered them, and, leaving their guide, strolled so far away that they never got out, and never have been found, but their groans and cries are still often heard under different parts of the city. But the immediate difficulty with the Indians was a dream the Doctor had had the night before, and which he had been relating to them. He had not, he said, dreamed anything about the Catacombs, but he had seen _See-catch-e-wee-be_, the one-eyed wife of the "_fire-eater_" (a sorcerer of their tribe), who had followed his track all the way to the great village of the whites (London), and from that to Paris, where he saw her sitting on a bridge over the water; that she gave him a pair of new mocassins of moose-skin, and told him that the _Gitchee Manitou_ (the Great Spirit) had been very kind in not allowing him and _Wash-ka-mon-ya_ (Jim) to go under the ground in the Great Village of the Whites, in England, and their lives were thereby saved. She then went under an old woman's basket, who was selling apples, and disappeared. He could not understand why he should have such a vision as this the very night before they were to go underground to the Catacombs, unless it was to warn him of the catastrophe that might befall them if they were to make their visit there, as they had designed. They had smoked several pipes upon this information early in the morning, and the chiefs had closely questioned him and also consulted him as their oracle in all such cases, and had unanimously come to the conclusion that these were foreboding prognostications sufficient to decide it to be at least prudent to abandon their project, and thereby be sure to run no hazard.[40]