Many of these stories bear a great resemblance to those extravagant tales of la Béte a la Grande Queue, Loup Garoup, Chasse Galerie and many others natural to superstitious people. It requires, therefore, a great deal of caution and attention to get at the true ones. I have here _inserted_ more than I originally intended, but they will serve to give you an idea of the notions of these people, and, except a few, I have selected those that appeared most rational. _However they will all come in time_. {44} [Wetiko] There is a kind of disease (or distemper rather, and of the _mind_, I am fully persuaded) peculiar to the Crees and Sauteux, and of which they have the greatest dread and horror. And certainly [the fear is] not without the very greatest cause--the consequences, forty-nine times out of fifty, being death unfortunately to many besides the _subjects_ or objects themselves. They term _this_ Wen-di-go (according to the French pronunciation, which is more correct than the English, in this word)--the proper signification of which, to me at least, and no one I think can doubt it, is _Giant_ of the Anthropophagi _Genus_, sect, tribe, or kind. The stories related of these are as extravagant and fantastic as those we read in our old romances _in the days of chivalry_. [They differ] in no one circumstance hardly but the means used in their destruction which, of course, is often done by the intervention or assistance of their guardian genii. However, there are some few more rational than those of _ours_, and though still beyond all bounds of credibility, are as devoutly believed by these poor creatures as the Gospel is by the most orthodox among us. I do not remember any of these sufficiently correctly to give you a few of the stories, one excepted. Suffice it to say that they are of uncommon size. Goliath is an unborn infant to them. And to add to their _dread_, they are represented as possessing much of the power of magicians. Their head reaching to the tops of the highest _poplars_ (about seventy or eighty feet), they are of proportionate _size_. Of course they must be very heavy. Their gait, though grand and majestic, at every step the earth shakes. They frequently pursue their prey (_Indians_ of course) invisibly. Yet they cannot so completely divest themselves of all the incommodities of nature as to prevent their approach being known. A secret and unaccountable horror pervades the whole system of one, several, or the whole band of those of whom he is in pursuit. [There are] phenomena in the heavens [and] earth. [Trapping a Wetiko] In the days of _Noah_, (or near them at least) there were a large party of _Indians_ collected together for mutual safety. Many camps had been already destroyed by him, and the Indians were in great danger [of] being entirely exterminated.