He could tell her what was coming,
What was coming from afar
What was near he could not see.
He could see the bear and the moose
Far away beyond the mountains,
He could see through everything."
The old Indian woman ended this story by saying abruptly, "Don't know
any more. Guess they all eat up by _mooin_" (the bear). She said
that it was only a fragment. "If you could have heard her repeat this,"
adds Mrs. Brown, "in pieces, stopping to explain what the characters
said, and describing how they looked, and anon singing it again, you
would have got the _inner sense_ of a wonderfully weird tale. The
woman's feet covering and the man's dress _like_ a rainbow, yet
not one, which made their bodies invisible, seemed to exercise her
imagination strangely; and these were to her the most important part of
the story." The fragment is part of a very old myth; I regret to say a
very obscure one.]
STORY OF THE THREE STRONG MEN.
(Micmac.)
There was a chieftain in the days of yore. He had a great desire for a
poor girl who was a servant, and who worked for him. To win this girl
he first I most lose his wife. He took his wife afar into the woods to
gather spruce-gum, and then left her there.
She soon found out that she had lost her way, and, wandering, she lost
it more and more for many days, until she came at last to a bear's den,
where, going in, she found the Chief of all the bears, who welcomed
her, provided for her wants, and furnished her with pleasant food; but
as the meat was raw he went into a neighboring town for fire.
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