Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/618

598 and motion as in hunting, which is a form of pleasure. He goes to his free market in the wilderness for all supplies, as the thrifty farm-wife goes to hunt eggs in the hay-loft. But in civilization he finds food, clothing, fuel, dwelling, even air and water, all claimed as owned by somebody, and all under cost. The rows of shops amaze him. There is so much to be sold, so many sellers and so many buyers, and there is so much mysterious virtue in the current coin, and the way of getting it, and the embarrassment of being without it. The policemen, to say nothing of lawyers, are another bewilderment. The paraphernalia of wealth and the miseries of poverty are equally amazing to him. In his own home and surroundings, as we have said, the Indian needs free acres, a generous expanse of say four square miles for his way of life. The densest region in London has 175,000 human beings in one square mile, and on the same area in the Fourth Ward of New York it is reported that 290,000 are crowded together. And what would the Indian say to an exchange of residences? What, too, about the hospitals, the court houses, the penitentiaries, the jails of our communities? There may be heartaches and woes in savage life. But what are they to the crushing miseries, the despairing burdens, the intolerable loads of wretchedness which are directly generated by the sterner conditions of life in crowded communities.

During the period of French colonization in Canada the return ships often took to France many Indians. Some of them, after sight and knowledge of civilized scenes, ways, and pleasures, were brought back to Canada. They may be regarded as competent judges and critics as we could have for comparing by experience and natural preferences the two states, wild and civilized. In every case their decision was for their own mode of life. La Hontan follows interviews of this sort with travelled and returned savages into details, and he makes them keen and able pleaders for the savage state, sharp critics of the slavery and