must not wet their feet. This seems to be the
law for all, not only for the young men. Like
the Arabs, the Indians make devoted friendships
among each other, the bond lasting for life.
"When a number have agreed to form such an
union, they first exchange their horses, guns,
pipes, and everything they possess, and then
hold a festival, smoke together, and take a vow
that this sharing of their property shall be
repeated every time a friend is in want. They
from this moment always assist in a war, and
never refuse a request." These unions are
never broken, despite the constitutional fickleness
of the Indians, and are just as lasting and
intimate when made between girls or women.
Many circumstances in this bond remind one of
the dakheel of the Arabs, and of the Sclavonian
"brother."

Those who want to know what are the secrets
lying in the mystery books for which Mr. Kohl
paid so many pounds of sugar and tobacco, and
such multitudinous yards of gaily flowered calico
for shirts, must turn to his volume of travels
themselves. The secrets are not to be explained
without the pictures, but both are sufficiently
curious to repay the idlest for their trouble.
Also, all the sign language we must leave: how,
the first two fingers of the right hand placed
astride over the forefingers of the left, and
rapidly moved, represent a journey on
horseback; how, for a foot journey, the two fingers
are waved several times through the air;
how, the hour is indicated by pointing at the
exact position of the sun in the sky at that
time; how, a day is made by passing the finger
from east to west over the whole vault of
heaven; how, the two forefingers parted and
moved from the mouth like the split tongue of
a snake mean lying: while one finger thrust
forward in a straight line from the mouth means
truth; how, the forefinger at the ear means " I
have heard and understood," but the flat hand
waved quickly past the ears, means "I have not
heard," or "not understood," or "I will not
understand;" how, "many," or "a large
number," is indicated by clutching at the air several
times, like a player on the castanets; how,
serpentine lines on the ground, mean a river; how,
the hollowed hand with the motion of drawing
water, means water; and how, a hand moved up
and down in the air means a mountain;—these
and other most curious and intelligible signs
must be searched for in the book itself. So
intelligible, indeed, is this language, and so
uniform among the Indians, that any two men of
different tribes, not understanding a syllable of
each other's spoken dialect, can communicate
fluently by means of their ten fingers; can tell
long stories, make jokes, ask advice or aid
—in short, can do all that lips, teeth, and
throat can do. This sign language of the
red men is the only attempt at an universal
language that has yet been successful, and,
indeed, seems to be the basis of hieroglyphic or
picture writing, which has always come before
the phonetic, or written alphabet. What if these
half-naked Indians use, in the shadows of their
western forests, the same primitive signs and
symbols as those which the great Pharaohs
translated into stone, and stamped for ever on
their eternal history-books by the waters of the
Nile!

OUR EYE-WITNESS IN LOW SPIRITS.

ARE there so few sources of melancholy in the
world, so few things to make one wretched, that
we must needs seek out gratuitous misfortunes,
and plunge, of malice prepense, into desperation
of our own making? Is external London
so hilarious that we must escape from it and
take refuge in stalactite caves, and in mouldy
cities by moonlight? Can we not extract damp
enough from a wet day in the month of January,
that we must go and be sprinkled with the spray
of a New River Company waterfall dimly lighted
by inadequate gas? Do we know no bores, that
we must go and pay a shilling (sixpence extra
for reserved seats) to be bored by bad imitators
of bad imitators of our popular entertainers?
Does no vulgarity of those with whom we are
occasionally brought in contact ever set our
nerves on edge, that we must have them
tortured by professional and studied smartness that
reaches the very inmost marrow of our spinal
chord? Is the natural gaiety of the metropolitan
heart so boisterous that asylums of sadness,
where that hilarity may be tamed down, are
absolutely required for the safety of the national
character? It must be so, else why the
Tristisseum.

Size, dirt, premature age, and an absence of
fixtures, are among the first things which strike
the visitor to this institution. Of all these
phenomena, perhaps the most striking is the
premature look of age about everything in the
interior of the building. It is a wonderful and
puzzling inquiry how it has had time to get so
old, considering the comparative recency of its
erection. To take, for instance, the theatre.
If one of the apartments in the palace of
Versailles had been left untouched, unrepaired,
unswept, since the period of the construction of
that superb edifice, it is just possible that it
might, by this time, present an appearance in
some slight degree approximating to the
astounding antiquity of aspect which distinguishes
the Theatre Royal, Tristisseum. What is the
reason of this? Do dull entertainments and bad
jokes turn into noxious vapours, and wreath
themselves around the huge columns which are
humanely placed about this apartment, so as to
impede the view of the stage as much as
possible? Is it the vapour of many comic songs
that lingers in noisome blackness on the ceiling?
It may be so. It may be, also, that the music
to which this theatre is accustomed may have
aged it prematurely; who shall say how its
brow—to speak figuratively—may have been
darkened by the piano alone, which keeps the
orchestra together—an instrument which has been
purchased, regardless of expense, by the
authorities at the Tristisseum, and which is
distinguished by being so supernaturally out of tune,