Here! I am again digressing, which is everlastingly the case with me when not in the _humor_ of scribbling. I should have mentioned first (because as you may see, I have begun _this_ story in the _middle_ instead [of] at either of the two ends) that when they want to dream of these things, as well as of any other particular thing, they must fast, and lay down to sleep, keeping their minds as free as possible from any other thoughts whatever, and wholly bent and employed on that particular one alone. I also should have observed in the proper place that the door [at which] the votary is introduced [through] is exactly in the middle of these rivers, there being twenty on each side of the door. The use [or] intent of the other five doors I never thought to enquire, and must leave you to guess as well as myself 'till such times as I can get this matter explained. [Songs and Notes] Their songs are delivered in _notes_, impressed or drawn on bark, in the form of hierlographics, and thus taught. And being hierlographics, (and not very dissimilar to those anciently used by the egyptians, nay indeed, I have reason to think from what I have seen of both, that any _learned_ man being perfectly acquainted with the one could trace a great deal in the other, but this opinion I hazard from my own ignorance), no two are alike. It therefore requires {24} him to learn them, that is [every] _one_ of them. For those notes are not like ours, _marked_ with regular bars so that one gamut serves for all. But with them, each one may be said to be itself a _gamut_. However, I have reason to think that they are regular and uniform. For many years ago, when I was still scarcely more than a boy, I remember throwing away the contents of one these medicine bags in which there were several strips of bark covered with these notes. An Indian happened to be by. He took one up and with the point of his knife, placing it on one of these, began to sing moving the knife regularly as children do when they begin to learn their a, b, c. This surprised me a little at the time, for the Indian was a stranger and had but lately arrived from his own lands that were several hundred miles off. After laughing at and ridiculing him, as is the custom with us, I asked how he could make them out? "The same," said he, "as you do to _reckon_ (read) your _papers_. See this one is (meant for) the _Thunder_, that the Earth. But I only know a few of these songs. The possessor of this bag knew a great deal. He was a great medicine man, [a] doctor."