![]() ![]() They control the movements of game, and thus their favor may mean life or death to man." Sometimes they partake of human qualities, will and intelligence, but they are of animal shape. "These beings are the immaterial controllers of that particular type of animal. "Each species of animal is supposed to have gigantic leaders of more than normal size," I explained. I was startled, even in the midst of my discussion, to note that it was Dreyer. Here the game lords reign supreme man himself is voiceless."Ī low, halting query reached me from the back of the room. Here they are the cries of animals, the voices from the swamp and the mountain - the solitary elementals before whom the primitive man stands in awe, and from whom he begs sustenance. What is different are the voices projected. Many of the physical phenomena are identical - the movement of powerful forces shaking the conical hut, objects thrown, all this is familiar to Western psychical science. "The only difference is the type of voices that emerge. "The special tent with its entranced occupant is no different from the cabinet," I contended. Moreover, I had come to know something of the strange similarities of the "shaking tent rite" to the phenomena of the modern medium's cabinet. I had long been a student of the strange melange of superstition and woodland wisdom that makes up the religious life of the nature peoples. I had been north that year, and the club had asked me to give a little talk on the religious beliefs of the Indians of the northern forest, the Naskapi of Labrador. ![]() ![]() The reason I came to hear his story was an odd one. The brilliant scientist had become the misanthrope the achievement lay all in the past, and Albert Dreyer kept to his solitary room, his solitary drink, and his accustomed spot by the fire. The club had been flattered to have him then, travel or no travel, but the end was not fortunate. His membership in the club dated back into the decades when he was a zoologist famous for his remarkable experiments upon amphibians - he had recovered and actually produced the adult stage of the Mexican axolotl, as well as achieving remarkable tissue transplants in salamanders. He was a morose and aging man, without family and without intimates. I used to think of myself as something of an adventurer, but the time came when I realized that old Albert Dreyer, huddling with his drink in the shadows close to the fire, had journeyed farther into the Country of Terror than any of us would ever go, God willing, and emerge alive. Some of us who were world travelers used to smile a little about that, even though we knew his scientific reputation had been, at one time, great. He was a member of the Explorers Club, and he had never been outside the state of Pennsylvania. ![]()
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