PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DENES. 67

it in soft moss, fed it with broth made from the flesh of the deer, and to
still its cries applied it to his breast, praying earnestly to the great Master
of Life, to assist his endeavours. The force of the powerful passion by which
he was actuated produced the same effect in his case, as it has done in some
others which are recorded: a flow of milk actually took place from his breast.
He succeeded in rearing his child, taught him to be a hunter, and when he
attained the age of manhood, chose him a wife from the tribe.

“The old man kept his vow in never taking a second wife himself, but
he delighted in tending his son’s children, and when his daughter-in-law used
to interfere, saying that it was not the occupation of a man, he was wont to
reply that he had promised to the great Master of Life, if his child were
spared, never to be proud, like the other Indians. He used to mention, too,
as a certain proof of the approbation of Providence, that, although he was
always obliged to carry his child on his back while hunting, yet that it never
roused a moose by its cries, being always particulary still at those times. Our
informant’ added that he had often seen this Indian in his old age, and that
his left breast, even then, retained the unusual size it had acquired in his
occupation of nurse’ ?,

This story will appear less incredible if we reflect that the lactiferous
glands are of the same nature in both sexes, and remember the case of a
drum major in Napoleon’s army, who concealed under a flowing beard breasts
whose length betrayed the use to which they had been put.

Cases of hermaphrodism, real or apparent, are to the best of my know-
ledge unknown among the Dénés®. So are authentic cases of albinism, though
individuals, generally of the male sex, with tufts of pure white hair do exist
even at the present day among the Babines. John G. Bourke mentions also
an albino family which, in 1881, lived among the Navahoes, and Fr. Leopold
tells me® that he saw last year a full blooded youth of that tribe with fair
skin and auburn hair.

The Acuteness of their Senses.

The sensitive faculties of the Dénés are developed in the same ratio as
their mental powers seem to be dormant. I remember reading that the keen-
ness of the American aborigines’ senses has been greatly exaggerated. He
that penned that remark could certainly not have been, like the present writer,
travelling for over twenty years with representatives of that race, else he

* Mr. W. F. Wentzel.

* “Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea”, vol. II, 53, et seq.

* In their legends the Navahoes mention occasionally beings which they call ndtli, a
term which the late Dr. Matthews translated by hermaphrodites, for the lack of a better
equivalent.

* “The Medicine-men of the Apaches”, 9th Ann. Rep. Bur. Ethnol., p. 469.

5 April 2, 1906.