oceans of Beowulf and Tasso rousing storms and retiring in angry, swollen rage when foiled by human craft or prowess.
In his adventure with the Great Sturgeon, the hero represents originally, almost without question, this class of sun-seeking heroes. But in the Hiawatha account, though his adventure resembles those of the other Thundder-boys, there is yet no sign left of the original object of the adventure, no faintest trace of the portentous horror of the sunless universe, in which, beside fireless hearths, the folk crouch terror-stricken. Nor is there left in his story the sweep and colorfulness of sky and sea that mark the Finnish and Greek legends. Hiawatha starts out in his canoe on a warm, sunny morning to get sturgeon-oil, with a squirrel cocking his tail in the bows of his canoe and the water ruffling gently beneath him. It is the sturgeon, however, who is most completely changed and who, in spite of his shrinkage of heroic fiber, is one of the most charming animals in the world,—far more a character than the corresponding figure of the pike in Kalevala. Our sympathies, as against Hiawatha, are with him entirely. In the first place, he is very attractive physically (an animal-reflection, as has been said, of Hiawatha’s glossiness), as he gleams up to the surface from his resting-place at the bottom of the lake, "sweeping the sandfloor" negligently with his tail.
There he lay in all his armor,
On each side a shield to guard him,
Plates of bone upon his forehead,
Down his sides and back and shoulders,
Plates of bone with spine projecting.
Painted was he with his war paints,
Stripes of yellow, red and azure,
Spots of brown, and spots of sable,
And he lay there on the bottom,
Fanning with his fins of purple.
But though a warrior, he is distinctly a warrior-at-ease. There is a superb air of large, easy indifference about Nahma, quite in keeping with his mythical origin. Hiawatha's bait and voice stir in him only bored weariness. "Take my bait, oh Sturgeon, Nahma," challenges Hiawatha,
"Come up from below the water,
Let us see who is the stronger.
Take my bait, oh King Fishes."
