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There were charms, incantations and magic of every conceivable sort. The medicine man of uncivilized or even half-civilized peoples really makes medicine for the mind rather than the body. There were, however, gleams of scientific light through all this murky region.
He, the shepherd of this half-civilized flock, the modern John Baptist; he, the voice of the great Anglican Church crying in this wilderness, how could he wed with this Indian girl who had been a common serving-maid in a house in Penetanguishene, and been dismissed therefrom with an accusation of theft that she could never prove untrue? How could he bring this reproach upon the Church?
These people in the big canoe were, probably, some of the trading Indians of Yucatan, and beyond them, in what we know to-day as Mexico, was a race of Indians, known as Aztecs, who were what is called half-civilized; for they had cities and temples and stone houses and almost as much gold and treasure as Columbus hoped to find in his fairyland of Cathay. But Columbus was not to find Mexico.
Great, too, was the merriment aboard, and the excitement when the canoes first came. The transition from the monotony of a sea-life to the loquacious bustle of barter with a half-civilized people is so sudden, that the mind at once feels in a strange land, and the commonest productions proclaim the luxuriant climes of the tropics.
The formulation of "luck" systems goes on in savage and half-civilized communities up to a certain point, and is then checked by the rise of higher religious ideas and by the growth of the conception of natural law.
Indeed, it may be doubted whether the most beautiful articles of clothing, the most tasteful and comfortable costumes, have not been produced by people who are classed as barbarous, or, at best, as half-civilized. What fabrics surpass the shawls of India in tint or texture? What garment is more graceful or more serviceable than the Mexican poncho, or the Peruvian rebozo?
In many savage and half-civilized tribes the obligation on a woman to keep herself pure is not fully recognized, and in the case of married women the opposition to unfaithfulness sometimes springs from the view that it is a violation of the husband's right of property in the wife. In some ancient civilized communities a god's right to a woman seems to have been taken for granted.
But I give myself credit for this: whatever has happened since, I never blamed Halsey and Gertrude for taking me there. And another thing: if the series of catastrophes there did nothing else, it taught me one thing that somehow, somewhere, from perhaps a half-civilized ancestor who wore a sheepskin garment and trailed his food or his prey, I have in me the instinct of the chase.
They dwell in houses made of wood thrown up on the shore, and collected by years of patience, and of moss and clay. The panes of the windows in winter are of ice, six inches thick; in summer, of skins. The better class are neatly and even tastefully dressed, and are clean, which is the very highest praise that can be given to half-civilized as well as to civilized people.
The Gónd he who lives back in the hills, far off from the neighborhood of the extensive planting districts, which have attracted many of those living near them to become at least half-civilized laborers in harvest-time is a primitive being enough. It was simply made of stakes driven into the ground, between which were wattled branches.
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