Still, they did manage those seeming impossibilities.

Swallowed the sand, may be.
Mr.Chauncy speaks highly of the patience and skill and alert intelligence of the native huntsman when he is stalking the emu, the kangaroo, and other game: "As he walks through the bush his step is light, elastic, and noiseless; every track on the earth catches his keen eye; a leaf, or fragment of a stick turned, or a blade of grass recently bent by the tread of one of the lower animals, instantly arrests his attention; in fact, nothing escapes his quick and powerful sight on the ground, in the trees, or in the distance, which may supply him with a meal or warn him of danger.

A little examination of the trunk of a tree which may be nearly covered with the scratches of opossums ascending and descending is sufficient to inform him whether one went up the night before without coming down again or not." Fennimore Cooper lost his chance.

He would have known how to value these people.

He wouldn't have traded the dullest of them for the brightest Mohawk he ever invented.
All savages draw outline pictures upon bark; but the resemblances are not close, and expression is usually lacking.