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There is truly not a more toilsome business in the wide world than that of a Kanasz.... The fokos is a hatchet, with a long handle, which the Kanasz hurls with great dexterity. Whenever he desires to pick out and slaughter one of his hogs, either for his own use or for sale, the attempt would be attended with danger, in the half-savage state of these animals, without such a weapon.

The finding of the telegraph-instrument practically assured me that David Innes had driven Perry's iron mole back through the earth's crust to the buried world of Pellucidar; but what adventures had befallen him since his return? Had he found Dian the Beautiful, his half-savage mate, safe among his friends, or had Hooja the Sly One succeeded in his nefarious schemes to abduct her?

Again the swift coureurs de bois, half-savage in their ambassadorship of the woods, follow the traces of the most ancient road- makers, the buffalo and deer, and the voyageurs carry their boats across the portage places.

The blood of Mary Connynge, this survival, this half-savage woman, unregulated, unsubdued, leaped high within her bosom, fled to her face, gave color to her cheek and brightness to her eye. Her breath shortened after feline fashion. Deep was calling unto deep, ancient unto ancient, primitive unto primitive. Without the gate of London prison there was one abject prisoner.

We, being first on the ground, had appropriated all the wood within reach; so that our fire alone blazed cheerfully. Around it soon gathered a group of uncouth figures, shivering in the drizzling rain. Conspicuous among them were two or three of the half-savage men who spend their reckless lives in trapping among the Rocky Mountains, or in trading for the Fur Company in the Indian villages.

They sent, as soon as they were aware of the impending danger, to all the nations and tribes around them, in order to secure their alliance and aid. These people were all wandering and half-savage tribes, like the Scythians themselves, though each seems to have possessed its own special and distinctive mark of barbarity.

Among them I observed two or three old Canadians, who could scarcely be distinguished from the natives by language, manners, or dress; such persons, when young, having formed an attachment to some of the Indian young women, betake themselves to their half-savage mode of life, and very soon cannot be persuaded to quit it.

Such stories as these, related by the Asiatic writers, though they were probably often much embellished in the narration, had doubtless all some foundation in fact, and they give us some faint idea of the modes of life and action which prevailed among these half-savage chieftains in those times. Vang Khan himself was the grandson of Mergus, who was sewed up in the sack.

On the contrary, no reasonable doubt could exist that the real murderer was the Indian who had been found among the bushes. The men who knew him spoke of him as passionate, brutal, more than half-savage there was perfect fitness between his appearance and character, and the barbarous manner of his crime.

If the half-savage Greek could share our feelings thus far, it is irrational to doubt that he went further, to find, as we do, that upon that brief gladness there follows a certain sorrow, the little light of awakened human intelligence shines so mere a spark amidst the abyss of the unknown and unknowable; seems so insufficient to do more than illuminate the imperfections that cannot be remedied, the aspirations that cannot be realized, of man's own nature.