But the divine maiden who died to
save her people appeared on earth no more, and in his agony
Tu-toch-anula carved her image on the face of the mile-high wall, as he
had carved his own on the surface of El Capitan,--where a lively faith
and good glasses may make out the effigies unto this day.
Sometimes these Indian traditions, being translated according to the
doctrine of correspondences, are of great use to the scientific man,--in
the present instance, as embalming with sweet spices a geological fact,
and the reason of a water-course which else might become obscured by
time. You may lose a rough fact because everybody is handling it and
passing it around with the sense of a liberty to present it next in his
own way; but a fact with its facets cut--otherwise a poem--is
unchangeable, imperditable. Seeing it has been manufactured once, nobody
tries to make it over again. The fact is regarded subject to liberal
translation; poems circulate virgin and _verbatim_. In some future
article I may recur to this topic with reference to the Columbia River,
and the capital light afforded to delvers in its wondrous trap-rock by
the lantern of Indian legend.
Let us leave the walls of the Valley to speak of the Valley itself, as
seen from this great altitude.
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