The second part--‘The Death of Minnehaha,’ for soprano and baritone solos, chorus and orchestra--begins with the description of the ‘long and dreary winter! the cold and cruel winter!’ and continues with the pathetic story of the wasting famine and the fever, how Minnehaha shuddered at the words of the two uninvited guests, ‘lay down on her bed in silence,’ how Hiawatha plunged into the forest in search of food only to return ‘empty-handed, heavy-hearted.’ Then follows the death and burial of Minnehaha and the lament of Hiawatha. The pathos of the words is given striking setting in the music, particularly in the opening chorus, ‘O the long and dreary winter!’ and in Hiawatha’s noble lament, ‘Farewell, O Minnehaha!’ which the chorus gently echoes after him. The chief share of the work is allotted to the chorus. The third part--‘Hiawatha’s Departure,’ for soprano, tenor and baritone solos, chorus and orchestra--is the longest of the three and has more opportunity for varied effects. Reminiscences of themes from the preceding parts give pleasing thematic unity to the whole work. It begins with the return of spring and with it Iagoo, the great traveller, ‘full of new and strange adventures.’ He relates to an incredulous audience how he saw a water ‘bigger than the Big-Sea-Water’ and on it a tall canoe with great wings, ‘bigger than a grove of pine-trees,’ in which were warriors ‘painted white.’ Hiawatha, of all the listeners, laughed not, for he had seen the same things in a vision. He tells them of the coming of the white men and prophesies their achievements and the downfall of the Indian race. Then follows, in simple narrative, Hiawatha’s welcome to the white men and the missionary priest who came with them to tell the message of the Saviour; Hiawatha’s touching farewell to Nakomis and his people (‘I am going, O my people, on a long and distant journey. To the portals of the Sunset, to the regions of the home-wind’); and his departure in the birch canoe as he ‘sailed into the fiery sunset, To the Islands of the Blessed, to the land of the Hereafter!’ Musically the third part is unequal to the others in the strength of its appeal, yet at the close, Hiawatha’s tender words of parting and the answering farewell of the people are written in the virile and characteristic mood of the first part. The solo voices assume a larger share of work than in the other parts. Coleridge-Taylor’s other choral works were of course in demand after the success of his first one, but, though received with favor, they do not measure up to the first, nor did they make the deep impression of the ‘Hiawatha’ music. IX