I heard him speak, but not understanding sufficiently the language, the women explained to me. I need not tell you how _we_ laughed at the poor devil, and so went off hunting _ivy_ which had been our support for a long time. But in the evening we found all that he predicted perfectly verified. This I assure you is a fact, and will maintain it notwithstanding everything _skeptics_, (excuse the term) or those unacquainted, or but superficially so, with these people may say. And I am also certain that he had no previous knowledge of their being there, for there was plenty of snow, and there were no other tracks but those of these two hunters, [and] we had pitched _up_ (the river) that day. But, here I am digressing--to return therefore. {27} [Fugitive Pieces] I am altogether out of the regular track that I had proposed to myself at my first setting off. My time is too short and my memory too bad to read over the whole so as to resume the regular course. The remainder shall be composed of _fugitive pieces_. Indeed the nature of some of them being a _compound_ will not admit of their being _treated_ of but in _sections_ if I may use the term. [The Soul] The first therefore, lest I have not time to _enter_ all, I shall speak of is _The Soul!_ This seems, to me at least, a most extraordinary and incomprehensible thing. Yet from the different sources which I have received it, and the manner of relation, serves but more and more to perplex. Whether it is really and absolutely the soul, or some other _principle_ on which the very existence depends, I cannot say. But something it is, lodged apparently in the heart or breast, that on these occasions flies off and leaves them, and at the very instant of its exit it is perceived. And [the parting] occasions such a derangement of the whole system, and particularly of the faculties, as very soon to deprive the object of life, but [primarily causes] a total want of sense, such as we suppose the soul _endows_ us with. [An Attempt to Capture a Soul] I shall here relate you one of the many stories of the kind, verbatim, as I received it. It was from an Indian, of course. He told me that one summer, being on a visit rather to a distant part of the country (perhaps two or three hundred miles [distant]), he fell in with one of his acquaintances who (as often happens between strangers, particularly to such as come from the southward) asked to purchase _medicines_ of him. I had but a small quantity, and only of four sorts or kinds. He being very anxious for them, I sold them _all_ to him. He was not satisfied. He must have more, though I positively assured him I had given him the last. Then he menaced me, and said I should feel the effects of his resentment arising from my avarice and _uncharitable_ spirit. Knowing his disposition, I returned to my friends, intending to be as far out of his way as possible.