Part 4 (1/2)
Great indeed was the disappointment and vexation of Oowikapun, who, while vainly imagining that at length he was about to hear the soothing voice of nature to comfort and bless him, got from her such a crack that he was knocked senseless, and, in addition, had his dwelling place completely wrecked. Groping round in the ruins, he succeeded in finding his blanket, which he threw over his shoulders as a slight protection against the heavy rain, which continued falling all night.
Oowikapun still lingered in his lonely forest retreat. His pride revolted at the idea of having to return to the village and confess that all his efforts had been in vain and that only defeat and humiliation had been his lot.
So a new wigwam was built in a more sheltered place amid the dark evergreen trees. His depression of spirit was such that for a long time he left his abode only when hunger compelled him to hunt for his necessary food. When he did resume his wanderings they were generally in the night. The singing of the birds had no charm for him, and the brightness of the summer days chased not away his gloom. More congenial to him were the ”watches of the night,” when the few sounds that fell upon his ears were weird and ghostly. Here, amid the gloomy shadows where the only sounds were the sighing of the winds among the trees, the melancholy hootings of the owls, or the distant howlings of the wolves, he pa.s.sed many weary hours.
The psalmist, with adoring love, could say: ”Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge,” but to Oowikapun neither the ”speech” of the day nor the ”knowledge” of the night gave any responsive answer to his heart's longings or led him any nearer to the source of soul comfort. And yet nature spoke to him as grandly as it was possible for her to utter her voice, and her last effort was of the sublimest character and such as but few mortals are permitted to witness.
It came to Oowikapun one night when he had aimlessly wandered far out from the shadows of the forest gloom, to a spot where the canopy of heaven, bright with its mult.i.tudes of stars, was above him.
Perhaps in no other land can nature in her varied aspects of sublimity and grandeur as regards celestial phenomena, be better studied than in the wild north-land. Her cyclonic storms in summer and her blizzard blasts in winter are at times not only terrific in their destructive power, but they are also overwhelmingly grand in their appearance.
Then her ”visions of the night” are at times sublimely beautiful. Her star-decked vault of heaven, absolutely free from all mists and fogs and damps, seems so high and vast. The stars glisten and twinkle with wondrous clearness. The flas.h.i.+ng meteors fade out but slowly, and the moon is so white and bright that her shadows cast are often as vivid as those of the sun in some other lands.
But nothing equals a first-cla.s.s field night of the mysterious aurora borealis. No other phenomenon of nature in magnitude of display, in varied brilliancy of colour, in bewildering rapidity of movement, in grandeur so celestial, in its very existence so unaccountable, is calculated to lift man up and away from things earthly, into the very realm and presence of the spiritual, as does a first-cla.s.s display of the northern lights, as seen in the far north-land. While they are generally more frequent in the winter months than at other times of the year, yet they are very uncertain in their comings, and sometimes burst upon the world and illuminate and fill up with celestial glory the brief hours of some of the short summer nights.
To Oowikapun, in his mental darkness and disquietude, there came one of these more than earthly visions of entrancing beauty. If in any one of nature's phenomena she could speak to a troubled soul, surely it would be in this. For while to Elijah the answer was in the still small voice, yet man unaided by divine revelation prefers the earthquake and the fire, or some other grand, overwhelming manifestation of nature's power, which appeals to the sensuous rather than to the spiritual.
To these Northern Indians the auroras have ever been a.s.sociated with the ghostly or spiritual. In some of the tribes the literal translation of the northern lights is the ”spirits of their forefathers going out to battle.”
The display that Oowikapun gazed upon was one of more than ordinary sublimity. He had left his little wigwam which nestled among the balsams, and had gone out from the forest gloom and had seated himself on the sh.o.r.e of the lake where the little waves made soothing music as they played among the pebbles at his feet. The sun had gone down in splendour, leaving a glorious radiance of sapphire and crimson on hills and waves. Quietly and imperceptibly the shadows of night mantled the long twilight gloaming, and then one by one the stars came out from their hiding places, until the whole high dome of heaven was bright.
The milky way brightened into wondrous distinctness, until it seemed to Oowikapun like a great pathway, and he wondered, as held in the tradition of his people, if on it, by and by, he should travel to the happy hunting grounds of his fathers.
After a time a brightness began to dawn in the northern sky, and then from it some brilliant streamers of light suddenly shot up to the heavens above. Then wavy ribbons of light quickly followed, and rapidly unrolling themselves parallel with the horizon, quivered and danced in rhythmic movements, blazing out at times in varied vivid colours as they gracefully undulated from east to west. Often had Oowikapun seen these displays, but up to this time he had only gazed with languid interest upon these nightly visitants. This night, however, there was a display so glorious that he stood as one entranced.
With a suddenness that can be shown only by electrical phenomena, there almost instantaneously shot up from below the eastern horizon a dazzling blaze of gorgeous electrical light, which in successive bounds rushed on and on until, like a brilliant meteor a million times magnified, it spanned the heavens, and for a time in purest white it seemed to hang an arch of truce from heaven to earth. For a little while it quivered in its dazzling whiteness, and then from it flashed out streamers in all the colours of the rainbow. With one end holding on to the arch of snowy whiteness they danced and scintillated and blazed until the whole heavens seemed aglow. Then breaking loose they seemed to form themselves into whole battalions of soldiers, and advanced and fought and retreated until the heavens seemed to be the battlefield of the ages, and stained with the blood of millions slain. During all the apparent carnage, great streamers waved continuously above the contending armies, and seemed like great battle flags leading on the forces to greater deeds of valour. Sometimes they seemed to change into great fiery swords, ready to add to the apparent carnage and destruction that seemed so intensely real.
Thus in ever-changing glories the vision of the heavens above continued, while Oowikapun, awed and subdued in spirit, felt thankful that he was only a spectator upon such scenes of ghostly carnage and blood. But impressive and glorious as what had already been revealed, the auroras had yet in reserve the climax of their display, and when it came it nearly froze his blood in his veins, and threw him trembling and terrified on his face upon the ground. Suddenly did the change come.
With, the rapidity of a lightning flash, the great quivering arch of light transformed itself, into a corona of such dazzling splendour that no words can describe it. From purest white the mult.i.tudes of streamers, of which it was now composed, suddenly changed to pink and blue, and green and yellow, all the time flitting and scintillating so rapidly that the eyes were pained in their vain efforts to follow the rapid flights.
Then in a twinkling of an eye the whole changed to a deep, blood-red crimson--so bloodlike, so terrible, so dazzling, so awful, that the brave man was crushed down, terrified and subdued before this blinding display of the omnipotent power of the Great Spirit.
The dauntless courage that had made him exult at the prospect of meeting the fiercest bear in the forest, with no other weapon than his trusty hunting knife, or the most hostile foe of his tribe, was of no avail here, and so, a crushed and vanquished man, as soon as he could, he cowered back to his wigwam, where, wrapping himself in his blanket, he long remained. He trembled at the thought of having been in such apparent contact with the spirit land, while his unhappy soul chided him with a sense of his unfitness for that unknown life beyond.
Poor Oowikapun, he was like many who, although they live under happier influences and amid the blaze of Gospel day, yet foolishly think that if some heavenly manifestation of the glory beyond, some glimpse of the land that is afar off, or some sight of its celestial inhabitants, were given them to enjoy, very quickly would they be convinced and converted.
John, the beloved disciple, saw the New Jerusalem and its inhabitants; dazzled and confused he fell at the feet of one of those redeemed ones, and wors.h.i.+pped the creature instead of the Creator.
Something more than the mere visions of heaven's glories or northern auroras are necessary to give peace to the troubled soul. Even so found unhappy Oowikapun, for when the excitement of these night visions wore off, he felt more than ever crushed down with a sense of his own littleness, while darker seemed his spiritual vision than ever before these auroral glories had blazed and flashed around him.
Disgusted and disappointed, he packed up his few things and returned to his village more miserable and depressed in spirit than ever.
He had had many evidences of a Creator, but had met with nothing that told him of a Saviour. The idea of being able to ”look up through nature unto nature's G.o.d,” is an utter impossibility unless the one looking has some knowledge of G.o.d in Christ Jesus. With this knowledge in his possession he can answer as did the devout philosopher when asked the question, ”What are the latest discoveries in nature?” replied, ”G.o.d everywhere.”
With G.o.d revealed in Christ Jesus there is something real in which to trust. Her mysteries that long perplexed are cleared up, and darkness that long continued is dissipated, and the trusting one realises that no longer is he slowly and feebly feeling his way along on the ”sinking sands” of uncertainties, but is securely built on the ”Rock of ages.”
CHAPTER NINE.
PHYSICAL TORTURE.
Oowikapun shortly after his return to the village found his way to the tent of Mookoomis, and candidly told him of his complete failure to find anything of comfort or peace of mind in communion with nature. He said he had faithfully carried out his directions, but that everything he hoped would have in it help or satisfaction seemed to have had just the reverse. Mookoomis listened intently to all he had to say, and then, perhaps for the first time in his life, freely admitted his own dissatisfaction and uncertainty of belief in their Indian way; but he was an obstinate, wicked old man, and determined, if possible, to keep Oowikapun walking, as he again said, ”as our forefathers walked.” So he urged him to make the great trial of fasting and personal torture, and see if in the delirium of physical agonies the voice of comfort for which he was longing would, not come to him.