Page:Early Spring in Massachusetts (1881).djvu/83

Rh roar heard here by an early settler. But there was a race here that slept on his skin. It was a new light when my guide gave me Indian names for things for which I had only scientific ones before. In proportion as I understood the language, I saw them from a new point of view.

A dictionary of the Indian language reveals another and wholly new life to us. Look at the wood canoe, and see what a story it tells of out-door life, with the names of all its parts and of the modes of driving it, as our words describe the different parts of a coach; or at the word wigwam, and see how close it brings you to the ground; or at Indian corn, and see which race has been most familiar with it. It reveals to to me a life within a life, or rather a life without a life, as it were threading the woods between our towns, and yet we can never tread, on its trail. The Indian's earthly life was as far off from us as heaven is.

I saw yesterday a musquash sitting on thin ice on the Assabet by a hole which it had kept open, gnawing a white root. Now and then it would dive and bring up more. I waited for it to dive again that I might run nearer to it meanwhile, but it sat ten minutes all wet in the freezing wind while my feet and ears grew numb, so tough it is. At last I got quite near. When I frightened it, it dove with a sudden