In the afternoon Mr. Johnson informed me that the Indians were preparing to dance, for my particular amusement. I was, of course, most thankful and delighted. Almost in the same moment, I heard their yells and shrieks resounding along the shore, mingled with the measured monotonous drum. We had taken our place on an elevated platform behind the house--a kind of little lawn on the hill-side;--the precipitous rocks, clothed with trees and bushes, rose high like a wall above us: the glorious sunshine of a cloudless summer's day was over our heads--the dazzling blue lake and its islands at our feet. Soft and elysian in its beauty was all around. And when these wild and more than half-naked figures came up, leaping, whooping, drumming, shrieking, hideously painted, and flourishing clubs, tomahawks, javelins, it was like a masque of fiends breaking into paradise! The rabble of Comus might have boasted themselves comely in comparison, even though no self-deluding potion had bleared their eyes and intellect. It was a grotesque and horrible phantasmagoria. Of their style of clothing, I say nothing--for, as it is wisely said, nothing can come of _nothing:_--only if "all symbols be clothes," according to a great modern philosopher--my Indian friends were as little symbolical as you can dare to imagine:--_passons par là_. If the blankets and leggings were thrown aside, all the resources of the Indian toilette, all their store of feathers, and bears' claws, hawks' bells, vermilion, soot, and verdigris, were brought into requisition as decoration: and no two were alike. One man wore three or four heads of hair, composed of the manes and tails of animals; another wore a pair of deers' horns; another was _coiffé_ with the skins and feathers of a crane or some such bird--its long bill projecting from his forehead; another had the shell of a small turtle suspended from his back, and dangling behind; another used the skin of a polecat for the same purpose. One had painted his right leg with red bars, and his left leg with green lines: parti-coloured eyes and faces, green noses, and blue chins, or _vice versâ_, were general. I observed that in this grotesque deformity, in the care with which every thing like symmetry or harmony in form or colours was avoided, there was something evidently studied and artistical. The orchestra was composed of two drums and two rattles, and a chorus of voices. The song was without melody--a perpetual repetition of three or four notes, melancholy, harsh, and monotonous. A flag was stuck in the ground, and round this they began their dance--if dance it could be called,--the movements consisting of the alternate raising of one foot, then the other, and swinging the body to and fro. Every now and then they paused, and sent forth that dreadful, prolonged, tremulous yell, which re-echoed from the cliffs, and pierced my ears and thrilled along my nerves. The whole exhibition was of that finished