After quitting Blue-fox, he galloped on for some time in the direction where he expected to find the Jaguar; but gradually he yielded to his thoughts, and his horse, understanding with that admirable instinct which distinguishes these noble animals, that its rider was paying no attention to it, gradually reduced its pace, passing from the gallop to a trot, and then to a foot-pace, walking with its head down, and snapping at a few blades of grass as it passed. John Davis was considerably perplexed by the conduct of one of the persons with whom accident had brought him in contact on this morning so fertile in events of every description. The person who had the privilege of arousing the American's attention to no eminent degree was the White Scalper. The heroic struggle sustained by this man alone against a swarm of obstinate enemies, his herculean strength, the skill with which he managed his horse--all in this strange man seemed to him to border on the marvellous. During bivouac watches on the prairie he had frequently heard the most extraordinary and exaggerated stories told about this hunter by the Indians with, a terror, the reason of which he comprehended, now that he had seen the man; for this individual who laughed at weapons directed against his chest, and ever emerged safe and sound from the combats he engaged in, seemed rather a demon than a being appertaining to humanity. John Davis felt himself shudder involuntarily at this thought, and congratulated himself in having so miraculously escaped the danger he had incurred in his encounter with the Scalper. We will mention, in passing, that no people in the world are more superstitious than the North Americans. This is easy to understand: this nation--a perfect harlequin's garb--is an heterogeneous composite of all the races that people the old world; each of the representatives of these races arrived in America, bearing in his emigrants' baggage not only his vices and passions, but also his creed and his superstitions, which are the wildest, most absurd, and puerile possible. This was the more easily effected, because the mass of emigrants, who have at various periods sought a refuge in America, was composed of people for the most part devoid of all learning, or even of a semblance of education; from this point of view, the North Americans, we must do them the justice of saying, have not at all degenerated; they are at the present day at least as ignorant and brutal as were their ancestors. It is easy to imagine the strange number of legends about sorcerers and phantoms which are current in North America. These legends, preserved by tradition, passing from mouth to mouth, and with time becoming mingled one with the other, have necessarily been heightened in a country where the grand aspect of nature renders the mind prone to reverie and melancholy.