Evening star., 1932-08-27
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY SARAH C.. BOWERMAN.

Grey Owl, son Of an Apache mother
and a Scotch father, became a Cana
dian trapper. His book THE Men Of
the Last Frontier" so well written that
it testifies to considerable education on
the part of the author. tells of his life
on the Canadian northern border, the
last frontier of North America. The
men of this Far Northern land have q
Summer holiday and work in the
Winter. Then they dig in" for the
short cold days and the long colder
nights, set their traps over q large
area, visit them on snowshoes and
stoically endure many hardships which
come, including loneliness. Perhaps the
men who lead this life like the loneh-
ness and consider it one OF their ad-
vantages that they are not obliged TO
get along with other human beings
Grey Owl points out the solitary joys
which are the trapper's. Nor Is his
life without its compensations. He may
climb a mountain and look as far as
the eye can reach, out over illimitable
league of forested hill and valley
stretching into the dim distance, with
a lCSllilb Va oAAN NAANAN -
none to say him nav. His Is
the sport of kings and he Is free as no
king ever was" The awesome life of
the trapper, surrounded by forests and
mountains, and much Of the time by
snow and ice, makes him Sharer OF
the superstitions of the Indians. He Us
likely to believe in the "Muji-Manito," :"
evil spirit of the Far North, and when
he sees the Northern Lights remembers
with a shiver that they are called the
Dance of Dead Men," There are so
many dead men after each Winter s
fight with the elemental forces of nature.
AS he falls asleep he Cften thinks of the
"Windigc," a formless phantom, partly
human, partly animal, flesh eating
creature which scours the lake chores
looking for those who sleep carelessly
without a fire and makes sleeping out
in some sections thing Of horror"
\ **&
Grey Owl was adopted by the Ojib-
ways as a member of their tribe. His
book continually recalls Longfellow' S
"Hiawatha," probably our nearest ap-
proach to an American epic. Almost
at the beginning Of his introduction, jim
enumerating the sources Of Indian
legends and traditions, Longfellow says:
From the forests and the prairies,
From the great lakes of the Northland,
From the land of the Ojibways,
From the land of the Dacotahs,
From the mountains, moors and fen
lands,
Where the heron, the Shuh-shuh- -gah,
Feeds among the reeds and rushes.
I repeat them as heard them
From the lips of Nawadaha,
The musician, the sweet singer"
In his first canto, Longfellow introduces
"Gitche Manito," the Master of Life, y
the opposite OF the evil spirit Of the
malign forces of nature. Gitche Mantle
calls together the various tribes Cat one
of the earliest Of peace conferences)
breaks from red stone quarry frag-
ment and molds pipe head. plucks
reed from the river edge and makes a
pipe stem, then fills the pipe with red
willow bark and smokes the calumet or
peace pipe. The warriors of the tribes
assemble, with their weapons and their
war ar,"~much like delegates at dis
armament conferences today. They
wildly glare at each other, in their
faces stern defiance" and "in their
hearts the feuds of ages" But Gitche
Manito, the great spirit, feels for them
all compassion and looks upon their
feuds and hatreds "but as quarrels
among children" He tells them OF all
the gifts he has bestowed upon them
the streams to fish in, the bear, bison
reindeer and wild fowl for their hunt
ing. and chides them for their discon-
tent and quarrelsomeness. He con-
cludes:
IAN your strength is in your union
All your danger is IN. discord;
Therefore be at peace henceforward
And as brothers live together"
This peace conference ends ideally. for
the warriors respond to the appeal Of
Gitche Manito by leaping into the rush
ing river and washing of their war
paint. They come out cleansed and
bury their weapons and smoke the pipe
Spirit ascends through the opening
clouds, through the doorways Of the
heaven"
Louis Bromfield shows his usual tech
nical ability and cleverness in handling
narrative and characters In his last
novel, "A Modern Hero" That the
characters are real is, perhaps, proved
by the fact that we are enough inter-
ested in them to dislike most of them.
At least, when misfortune overtakeS
them. we are not as Indifferent as II
they were merely broken toys. We feel
that they deserve all their troubles and
perhaps more than they receive. Nine.
Azais, the leopard trainer. on the whole,
lives longer with more satisfaction shan
her violent temperament and unre-
strained habits would make probable.
But centenarians are often persons who
have never taken any care of their
-
Joanna crashes to his end, we feel that
for most and that Joanna has been
spared the greater sorrow of watching
the boys further development into a
second Pierre Even the tragedy Of the
inoffensive Claire at the hands Of Pierre
does not move us to regret; she is such
a wilmer. such a weakling. And when
the officers of the law come to take
Pierre away, we feel that his supreme
selfishnes and unscrupulousness have
met their Just end Joanna is the one
character in the book whom we are
sorry to leave, the sturdy peasant who
remains respectable" in spite Of her
early episode of wild romance. who
forces success out of moderate oppor-
tunity. who looks upon doing her duty
as no sacrifice but just an everyday
dlldu, WIlO has Llcl OWLl bdS
cannot be shocked by others, who sees
clearly, so that she neither hates Pierre
nor regrets him, and so that she esti-
mates her son according to realities.
x
F. A. Mitchell-Hedges has led many
expe 'itions for the British Museum
into Central Ar"erica and has recently
headed Z rmilar expedition for the
Museum OF the American Indian Of
New York In his book, Land Of
Wonder and Fear" he tells of the dis
covery in British Honduras of buried
city, called Lubaantun. or the Place OF
Fallen Stones. The party of explorers
was obliged to tunnel through the jun
gle and at last came to a place where.
beneath the jungle growth, they found
piles of limestone blocks, apparently
the ruins of city. On later trips the
writer and co-workers, with Indians
as laborers. cut and burned the jungle
and finally laid bare city of about