Note 151 — FICTION (continued 7)

They now watched the sun, and when it was at the other end of the lake, they took their course from it, and then traveled a long time straight ahead. Again they reached the limit of the land. Once more they said: “It seems that we have come to the end of the earth. Let us look for our grandfather’s lodge.” They saw an opening or clearing, and on the farther side smoke arising. They found a lodge there, and on looking in saw an old man, at which they said one to the other, “I wonder whether that is our grandfather.” While they were looking, the old man, straightening himself up, called out: “Come in, grandsons. Why do you stay outside?” They looked at each other, saying, “How did he see us, for his back is toward us?” Going around the lodge, they entered. The old man said, “You have a message, otherwise you would not have come; but let me get my pipe first.”151 Taking his pipe and beginning to smoke, he said, “Now I am ready.” “Well,” said the two men, “our people are assembled in an important condoling council, and they said to us: ‘Go to our grandfather; tell him that our chief has fallen and that we want to make him alive again.’ ” “Very well,” replied the old man, who was one of the Ganos (Spring-frog people); “you have come on a very important errand and I will give you something that will be of great use to you, in fact the only thing that can bring your chief to life again.” Going into a hole in the ground, the old man returned with a white flint in the form of a canoe, about as long as a finger. In one end of this white flint canoe was some black paint and in the other end was a powder—a medicine of some mysterious kind. The old man said: “When you go to use what I give you now, color your faces with this paint, then paint your dead chief’s face with it also; and after that, put this powder on the edges of the wound and wash his face with cold water. Then blow on him and he shall come to life. When he opens his eyes, put this powder into water and give it to him to drink.” Hurrying off in the boat, they arrived at Broken Land without delay. They said: “We were hindered by the lake.152 We kept going around it.” The new chief replied, “People seldom get away from that lake, which is called Ganigonhadontha Ganiodae152 (the delirium-making lake); it puts men out of their minds.”