Lake Nipissing was on this occasion almost covered with the canoes of the warriors, moving solemnly toward that point of the shore where the souls of the departed were to be fêted. Under a long, rough shed, in coffins of bark, wrapped in costly furs, lay the decaying bones of those who had gone to the other world; and over them a song, half of triumph, half of regret, was sung by the warriors, the women accompanying them with a wailing cry, full of unutterable melancholy.
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INDIAN BURIAL GROUND.
When these heathen rites were over, the Jesuit fathers, who, with that earnestness and thoroughness which characterized their whole body, had prepared themselves for their mission by the study of the Nipissing language and the Nipissing mode of thought, came forward and addressed the assembled multitudes. They spoke of the Saviour of the white man and of the red, who came back from the grave after laying down His life for all mankind: and so worked upon the already melting mood of the hardy warriors of the West, that they obtained permission to dwell on the shores of Lake Nipissing—nay, more, an eager invitation from some Chippeway guests to visit them in their own homes beyond Lake Superior.
The eagerness with which this opening was seized may be imagined. The Chippewayans, or Athabascas, one of the four families of the great Finnish nation, occupied that great lone land stretching away beyond the north-
