It was with a strange and fascinating pleasure, that, after having striven to resuscitate the races of Britain’s prehistoric ages, by means of their buried arts,[1] I found myself face to face with the aborigines of the New World. Much that had become familiar to me in fancy, as pertaining to a long obliterated past, was here the living present; while around me, in every stage of transition, lay the phases of savage and civilised life: the nature of the forest, the art of the city; the God-made country, the man-made town: each in the very process of change, extinction, and re-creation. Here, then, was a new field for the study of civilisation and all that it involves. The wild beast is in its native state, and hastens, when relieved from artificial constraints, to return to the forest wilds as to its natural condition. The forest-man—is he too in his natural condition? for Europe’s sons have, for upwards of three centuries, been levelling his forests, and planting their civilisation on the clearings, yet he accepts not their civilisation as a higher goal for him. He, at least, thinks that the white man and the red are of diverse natures; that the city and the cultivated field are for the one, but the wild forest and the free chase for the other. He does not envy the white man, he only wonders at him as a being of a different nature. Broken-Arm, the Chief of the Crees, receiving the traveller Paul Kane and his party into his lodge, at their encampment in the valley of the Saskatchewan, told him the following tradition of the tribe. One of the Crees became a Christian. He was a very good man, and did what was right; and when he died he was taken up to the white man’s heaven, where everything was very beautiful. All were happy amongst their friends and relatives who had gone before them; but the Indian could not share their joy, for everything was strange to him. He met none of the spirits of his ancestors to welcome him: no hunting nor fishing, nor any of those occupations in which he was wont to delight. Then the Great Manitou called him, and asked him why he was joyless in His beautiful heaven; and the Indian replied that he sighed for the company of the spirits of his own people. So the Great Manitou told him that he could not send him to the Indian heaven, as he had, whilst on earth, chosen this one; but as he had been a very good man, he would send him back to earth again.