when the eye has no intervening objects to divide the space into parts as measures of the whole.
I did not venture to correct Chuar's judgment, but simply sought to discover his method of reasoning. As our conversation proceeded he explained to me that the stone could not go far over the canyon, for it was so deep that it would make the stone fall before reaching the opposite bank; and he explained to me with great care that the hollow or empty space pulled the stone down. He discoursed on this point at length, and illustrated it in many ways: "If you stand on the edge of the cliff you are likely to fall; the hollow pulls you down, so that you are compelled to brace yourself against the force and lean back. Any one can make such an experiment and see that the void pulls him down. If you climb a tree the higher you reach the harder the pull; if you are at the very top of a tall pine you must cling with your might lest the void below pull you off."
Thus my dusky philosopher interpreted a subjective fear of falling as an objective force; but more, he reified void and imputed to it the force of pull. I afterward found these ideas common among other wise men of the dusky race, and once held a similar conversation with an Indian of the Wintun on Mount Shasta, the sheen of whose snow-clad summit seems almost to merge into the firmament. On these dizzy heights my Wintun friend expounded the same philosophy of gravity.
Now, in the language of Chuar's people, a wise man is said to be a traveler, for such is the metaphor by which they express great wisdom, as they suppose that a man must learn by journeying much. So in the moonlight of the last evening's sojourn in the
