[14] Amongst other plans to this effect, there is one proposed, by which midshipmen on half-pay will be obliged to make at least two voyages annually, in merchant ships, as mates, and all others must have done so, in order to entitle them to be reinstated in their former rank. Another is, that there shall be small vessels, rigged and fitted out in war style, appropriated to the purpose of teaching pupils, practically, the science of navigation, and the discipline necessary to be observed on board vessels of war. The Americans may not eat their fish with silver forks, nor lave their fingers in the most approved style; yet they are by no means so contemptible a people as some of our small gentry affect to think. They may too, occasionally, be put down in political argument, by the dogmatical method of the quarter-deck; but I must confess that _I_ never was so fortunate as to come in contact with any who reasoned so badly as the persons Captain Bazil Hall introduces in his book. CHAPTER IX. The wailings of the Cherokee, the Choctaw, and the Creek, may have been wafted across the waters of the great salt lake, and the Pale-face in his own land may have heard their lamentations;--but the distant voice is scattered by the passing winds, and is heard like the whisper of a summer breeze as it steals along the prairies of the west, or the cry of the wish-ton-wish as it faintly reaches the ear of the navigator, when, in the stilly night, he floats down "the old father of waters." The present posture of Indian affairs, and the peculiar situation of the Indian nations east of the Mississippi, have caused that unfortunate people to be the topic of much political controversy and conversation; a succinct account of the political condition of these tribes, and of the policy which has been pursued, and which is being pursued towards them, by the executive government, may not therefore be uninteresting. When Georgia, by becoming a member of the Union, ceded part of her sovereignty to the general executive, that government acknowledged her claimed limits, and guaranteed to her the protection of the Union against foreign and domestic violence. Subsequently, in the year of 1802, in consideration of a certain portion of lands ceded, the United States became bound to purchase for Georgia, any claim which the Cherokee nation might have on lands within her boundaries, whenever such purchase could be made on reasonable terms. On these positions are based the Georgian claims, which the United States government has hitherto pleaded inability to satisfy, inasmuch as all efforts to purchase the Indian lands have proved fruitless.