But just here comes in the interesting point in our study: how has the aver age heroine been made to impress us as beautiful? The naughty and the foolish have made us feel their beauty by constant description of it, by incessant repetition from the author of all their charms. From George Eliot to Zola we are made to feel any sensuous beauty of man or woman by the persistent dwell ing upon it; the ever recurring allusions to sinuous grace, to the kitten-like prettiness, to the dangerous fascination of finely-moulded hand or arm, to the absolute perfection of form and movement and presence, whether in highbred Gwendolen or low-bred Nana. But with the heroines it has been different. Almost invariably the author is unconsciously willing to trust the impression to the effect of the girl herself, absolutely without description. Run over mentally and carelessly those whom you would instinctively mention as the most beautiful heroines of fiction; who are they? After Homer's Helen of Troy and Virgil's Venus, you will inevitably recall all of Shakespeare's heroines: Cordelia, Portia, Imogen, Juliet, Beatrice, Desdemona. Ouida's Wanda will be conspicuous in your memory, and you will think soon of Romola, not of Dorothea, for poor Dorothea's utter lack of humor gives her just that little flavor of ridiculousness which prevents us from thinking of her with perfect satisfaction. Romola, too, was destitute of the sense of humor, but then there was nothing humorous in her situation; while in that of the nineteenth century Dorothea there were untold humorous conditions of which her inappreciative ness made her seem absurd. Other lovely heroines will come to mind, according to your range of reading, but I will wager that you never could describe their beauty. What do you know about Virgil's Venus? Only that she walked

Homer's Helen ? Only that old men rose in reverence as she passed. What do you know of Cordelia's personal appearance, or Imogen's, or Portia's, or Juliet's, or Beatrice's? Here the test is infallible, because the text is dramatic. and in the drama the author is absolutely cut off from any kind of description. Such descriptions of the lady's loveliness as may be put into the mouth of a Bassanio or a Romeo are felt to be the ravings of a lover, with which the spectator may or may not fall into sympathy. The inference is obvious; those authors have most successfully impressed us with the fine appearance of their heroines, who have not entered into the details. One would almost venture to claim that every stroke of the pen which tells you that Araminta had beautiful hair, or magnificent eyes, or glorious arms, or splendid presence, actually weakens the effect. And here we get at the supreme art of dwelling so much on the personal beauty of the naughty, or silly ones; by constant allusion you are made to feel that this "more obvious beauty," as George Eliot said so well, becomes tiresome by iteration," and that per contra the "triumph of manifold sympathy over a monotonous attraction," or, in other words, the superiority of an interesting being whose eyes you don't know the color of, over one whose interestingness lies wholly in the color of her eyes, is made most impressively conspicuous.

All this we have been led to argue out for ourselves, from a certain curiosity as to the kind of impression made recently by a writer who has cared to rely for the interest of her readers on absolutely nothing but her heroine's physical beauty.

For Barbara Pomfret's mental agonies certainly do not rise to the dignity of a genuine psychological study. We are given a perfectly beautiful heroine, i. e.. a heroine perfectly beautiful physically in the opinion of herself and the author. We are told that she is perfectly beautiful, and how she is perfectly beautiful, with every detail of eyes and hair and complexion, till no other impression of her is intended to be left on our mental retina but that of a young woman supremely lovely. But is she lovely

to the reader? Does such an effort to trick us into admiring a heroine ever succeed? We venture to say never. Barbara Pomfret is made simply ridiculous by her own and the author's ecstasies over her. You don't feel her beauty in the least; you can only laugh. You cannot conceive why Jock should have cared a straw for her; and while, in the face of all the author's adjectives, you would not dare to deny Barbara's physical prettiness, you have a satiated sense of desiring with it some 'less monotonous attraction."

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The moral of all this is not that we should have any less beauty in fiction, but that authors should study their methods for producing the effect of

beauty. The strictest realist will insist upon plenty of beauty for the silly, the naughty and the heroic ones alike; but he refuses to take the beauty on trustthe author's word is not enough for him. Julian Hawthorne has said most suggestively that we never become as callous to beauty as we do to pain; every new revelation of it is a new and impressive delight to which we never fail to respond. But you must let us discover the beauty for ourselves; all your assurances that it is there, and your description of it, fall to ineffectual ashes in the mere presence of a Cordelia, or an Imogen, about whom the author tells us absolutely nothing.

Alice Wellington Rollins.

On the mountains of the prairie, On the great red pipestone quarry.

ID it ever occur to the reader of "Hiawatha" what could have been Longfellow's meaning by this apparent contradiction? It came to us, a party of ten, on horseback, in its full significance, one perfect June day, as we cantered over the terraces and imperceptible swells of the Coteau des Prairies. When we dismounted and climbed what Catlin calls "the noblest mound of its kind in the world," two thousand feet above the level of the sea, we found it difficult to realize the great elevation, because so gradual. Yet in the limpid atmosphere, Lake Benton, fifteen

VOL. VIII.-46

miles away, was clearly visible, and the course of the Big Sioux, twenty miles west, could be traced by the timber on its banks, while away to the north-east lay the broken hills where the Des Moines and Redwood rivers take their rise. The immediate outlook was not broken by tree or shrub; there was nothing to intercept the boundless ocean of prairie, vanishing into blue and white-capped mountains of sky.

Little has been known of this grand Coteau des Prairies, except from a few explorers of 1832 and 1836. This upland prairie-rising four hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding land, for a distance of one hundred and thirty miles-is described by these explorers as "most beautiful." It was a mysterious land, the Mecca of sacred import to the red man. Here, in ages past, terrible battles have been fought by savage tribes, some of the

rude earthworks and fortifications yet remaining. Here,

Gitche Manitou, the Mighty.

Called the tribes of men together,

and taught them the arts of peace. Here, is the famous quarry where the blood-red stone for the peace-pipe-the calumet of history-is found, and many are the thrilling and poetic legends connected therewith.

་་

This blood-red stone has a peculiar significance, and is an object of veneration to the Indian. Since taught by 'Manitou" (the Great Spirit) warlike tribes have gathered here in peace, to worship, dig the stone and smoke the calumet. Relics of camps may be traced in great numbers, by the stones placed in circles, now nearly buried from sight, except when prairie fires sweep over them. Legend says that a remnant of red men were driven from a deluge to the top of this rocky crest, where an eagle had built her nest, and that the rising waters swallowed all but one maiden, who clung to the eagle for safety. When the waters receded, the Great Spirit found a cliff of rocky warriors turned into shining jasper! In solemn wrath he vowed that henceforth the tribes should meet here only in peace, that no war-whoop should be heard, no bow and arrow or tomahawk should be seen at this rendezvous, but hereafter the tribes should assemble here

each year to wash off their war-paint in the lake, bury the hatchet and smoke the peace-pipe, in token of which, the maiden and war-eagle should sacrifice a milkwhite bison-a rare and sacred beast, and an object of ceremonious and mysterious sacrifice. It was laid on the altar of jasper, when lo! the flames of heaven descended, as lightning, connecting the stem of Manitou's pipe with the altar, from whence rose sweet incense, the blood of the sacrifice staining the crag a crimson stain. The eagle also joined in the compact by leaving five eggs, which turned into huge boulders of stone, watched over by two female genii, who remained in the grottoes between those eggs, and alternately sleep and watch the sacred quarry. Then Manitou broke open the quarry for his children, and taught them how to carve the calumet and smoke it as a pledge; after which he left his own impress on a commanding

pinnacle of rock, in the form of a human face, and then vanished from their sight.

Since that time, oblations have ascended from tens of thousands of savages, who have left their hieroglyphics on the stones, and unmistakable proofs of their industry in the vast piles of upturned earth. It is said, that long before Manitou had broken open this quarry, when wars and bloodshed had decreased the tribes, three maidens-the last of their sex-fled to these rocks, and the Great Spirit, pitying their woes, turned them into stone, where they stand the object of wonder to-day.

Now in memory of the conflict.

And the part the boulders bore,
They are named in weird tradition
The Three Maidens "evermore.*

This almost unknown bit of historic ground is situated near the southern end of the Coteau des Prairies, on the divide of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, two hundred and eighty miles from St. Paul, in the land of the Da-ko-tas, seven miles from the eastern border of that From the sumterritory, in Minnesota. mit of the pipestone quarry, divide the long parallel swells, like the waves of a sea, until the green of earth and the blue of heaven mingle in one horizon. Catlin, the famed explorer of Indian country, was the first white man who ventured upon this spot. He undertook this journey in 1832, attracted by the fame of this peculiar ledge and the surrounding country, represented by Indian legends and tales. At that period, a journey which consumed eight months over two thousand four hundred miles, was made at great expense of money and physical strength. For companions, he had his trusty Indian guide and a young English gentleman. His description of the coteau, the pipestone ridge and quarry is as exact in most particulars as if given to-day, and for this reason has an added charm:

"For many miles in the distance we had the coteau in view, which looked liked a blue cloud settling down in the horizon, and when we arrived at its base, we were scarcely sensible of the fact, from the graceful and almost imperceptible swells with which it commences its elevation above the country

*Adelaide George Bennett.

about it.

Over these swells and terraces gently rising one above another, we traveled for a distance of forty or fifty miles, when we at length reached the summit of the pipestone quarry, and the object of our campaign. From the base of this majestic mound to its top, there was not a tree or bush to be seen in any direction, and we were assured by our Indian guide that it descended to the Missouri with a similar inclination for an equal distance, divested of everything that grows, save the grass and animals that walk upon it. On the very top of this mound-ridge, we found the farfamed quarry, or fountain of the redpipe. The principal and most striking feature of this place is a perpendicular wall of close-grained, compact quartz, of twenty-five or thirty feet in elevation, running nearly north and south, with its face to the west, exhibiting a front of nearly two miles in length, when it disappears at both ends by running under the prairie, which is there a little more elevated, and probably covers it for many miles to the north and south. The depression of the brow of the ridge at this place has been caused by the wash of the little stream produced by several springs at the top of the ridge, a little back from the wall, which has gradually carried away the superincumbent earth, and having bared the wall for a distance

of two miles, is now left to glide for some distance over a perfectly level surface of quartz rock, and then leap from the top of the wall into a deep basin below, from thence seeking its course to the Missouri, forming the extreme source of a noted and powerful tributary, called the Big Sioux. This beautiful wall is perfectly stratified in several distinct horizontal layers of light gray and rose or flesh-colored quartz, and through the greater part of the way both on the front of the wall and over acres of its horizontal surface, it is highly polished or glazed, as if by ignition.

"At the base of this wall, and running parallel to it, there is a level prairie of half a mile in width, in any and all parts of which the Indians procure the redstone for their pipes by digging through the soil and several slaty layers of the stone, to the depth of four or five feet. From the very numerous marks of ancient and modern excavations, it would appear that the place had been resorted to, for many centuries, to secure the redstone; and from the number of graves and remains of ancient fortifications in the vicinity, as well as from their actual traditions, it appears that the Indian tribes have long held this place in superstitious estimation, and also, that it has been the resort of different tribes who have made their regular pilgrimage here

SPECIMEN BRAVES.

to renew their pipes. It is evident also, that these people set an extraordinary value on the red-stone, independent of the fact that it is more easily carved and makes better pipes than any other stone. Whenever an Indian presents a pipe of it, he gives it as something from the Great Spirit, and some of the tribes have a tradition that the red men were all created from the red-stone, and that it thereby is a part of their flesh'! Such was the superstition of the Sioux on this

subject, that we had great difficulty in approaching it, being stopped by several hundred of them, who ordered us back, and threatened us very hard, saying that no white man had ever seen it, and that none should.

ser

"At the base of this wall, and within a few rods of it, on the very ground where the Indians dig for the stone, rests a group of stupendous boulders of gneiss, leaning against each other, weighing unquestionably eral hundred tons. These blocks are composed chiefly of feldspar and mica, of an exceedingly coarse grain, the feldspar often occurring in crystals an inch in diameter. The sur face of these boulders is in every part covered with gray moss, which gives them an exceedingly ancient and venerable appearance, while their sides and angles are rounded by attrition to the shape and character of other erratic stones found throughout the country.

"That these five immense blocks of pre

cisely the same character, and differing materially from all other specimens of boulders which I have seen in the great valleys of the Mississippi and Missouri, should have been hurled some hundreds of miles from their native beds and be lodged in so singular a group on this elevated ridge, is truly a matter of surprise for the scientific world as well as for the poor Indian, whose superstitious veneration for them is such that not a spear of grass is broken or bent by his