"
This communication excited a tremendous feeling among the savages,
when its purport came to be explained to the whole party. Apart from
the extraordinary, miraculous nature of such a spring, which in
itself was sufficient to keep alive expectation and gratify
curiosity, it was so comfortable to have an inexhaustible supply of
the liquor running out of the bowels of the earth, that it is no
wonder the news spread infinite delight among the listeners. Even
the two or three of the chiefs who had so shrewdly divined the
manner in which the liquor had been spilled, were staggered by the
solemnity and steadiness of the bee-hunter's manner, and perhaps a
little carried away by sympathy with those around them. This
yielding of the human mind to the influence of numbers is so common
an occurrence as scarcely to require explanation, and is the source
of half the evils that popular associations inflict on themselves.
It is not that men capable of SEEING the truth are ever wanting; but
men capable of MAINTAINING it, in the face of clamor and collected
power.
It will be readily conceived that a medicine-man who is supposed to
possess the means of discovering a spring that should overflow with
pure whiskey, would not be left without urgent demands for a speedy
exercise of this art.
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