This was carried so far that they are described as having at length become less a single nation than an aggregate of all the surrounding tribes. The stranger being received into one of the families as a husband, brother, or son, is treated with the utmost tenderness; and she, who perhaps immediately before exhausted all her ingenuity in tormenting him, now nurses the wounds she has made, and loads him with caresses. He becomes completely one of the clan, and goes with them to war, even against his former countrymen; and so far is the point of honour carried, that to return into their ranks would be branded as an act of baseness. There are, however, many occasions in which the more inhuman resolution is taken, and a fearful display is then made of the darkest passions that can agitate the human breast. The captive is informed of his fate by being invested with moccasins of black bear-skin, and having placed over his head a flaming torch, the sure indication of his doom. Before the fatal scene begins, however, he is allowed a short interval to sing his death song, which he performs in a triumphant tone. He proclaims the joy with which he goes to the land of souls, where he will meet his brave ancestors who taught him the great lesson to fight and to suffer. He recounts his warlike exploits, particularly those performed against the kindred of his tormentors; and if there was any one of them whom he vanquished and caused to expire amid tortures, he loudly proclaims it. He declares his inextinguishable desire to eat their flesh, and to drink their blood to the last drop. This scene is considered, even when compared with the field of battle, as the great theatre of Indian glory. When two prisoners were about to be tortured by the French at Quebec, a charitable hand privately supplied a weapon with which one of them killed himself; but the other derided his effeminacy, and proudly prepared himself for his fiery trial. In this direful work the women take the lead, and seem transformed into raging furies. She, to glut whose vengeance the doom has been specially pronounced, invokes the spirit of her husband, her brother, or her son, who has fallen in battle or died amid torture, bidding him come now and be appeased, a feast is prepared for him, a warrior is to be thrown into the great cauldron; his blood will be poured out; his flesh torn from the bones: let the injured spirit then cease to complain. A game begins between the torturers and the tortured—one to inflict the most intense suffering, the other to bear it with proud insensibility. That there may be some appearance of open contest, he is not chained, but merely tied to a post, and a certain range allowed, within which, while the brand, the hatchet, and every engine of torture are applied, he can do something to repel his assailants, and even attack in his turn. He struggles fiercely in the unequal strife, and while his frame is consuming in agony, still defies