With the above characteristic and wild song, chanted with the action and in the tones peculiar to the Indian story-teller, and which, in truth, is always the manner in which their traditions are related, the Little Snake, the principal chief of the Ricaras, and who was as celebrated throughout the wilds of the west for his skill in song as Carolan in the palace of his mountain lord, or Blondel at the court of Coeur de Lion, commenced his tale. As far as the visual organ was concerned, Mr. Verdier was before acquainted with the curious images to which it referred. He had seen, a few miles back, from the Mississippi, a small "willow-bank," rising in the words of the song above a "shallow and turbid stream," upon which were two stones bearing a great resemblance to the human form, and a third having a still greater resemblance to a dog. He knew that they were objects of exceeding veneration with all the tribes of the west, especially with the Ricaras, and that whenever they passed them, and they often deviated many miles from their path for that purpose, they never failed to make an offering, generally of some ornament, or valued part of their dress, or martial equipment, to propitiate the intelligences supposed to inhabit the statues, and render them favourable to their wants and wishes, and to their success in war, or the chace He saw that the continued observance of this rite for a long period, probably for ages, had collected around the "Idols" a large heap of stones, sticks, blankets, deer-skins, eagle's' feathers, &c., but he had remained till now in ignorance of the tradition, which assigned to them a past existence as human beings. He knew that every thing which is not in the common order of things, even a tree singularly shaped, or presenting an unusual excrescence, a blade of grass twisted into an uncommon form, a berry or a stalk of maize growing to an unusual size, become, in the eyes of these wild and superstitious children of the forest, invested with supernatural interest; but he had supposed that it was the mere resemblance which these statues bore to human beings that had caused the Indians to regard them as objects worthy of the most hallowed form of their rude worship.