"'And now,' said I, 'M. Duponceau, lest you should make yourself and me a great deal of trouble, and call _me_ an impostor also, I will feel much obliged if you will close your book again; for I am quite sure I should prove myself under your examination just as ignorant as Mr. Hunter, and subject myself to the same reproach which is following him through the world, emanating from so high an authority. Mr. Hunter and myself did not go into the Indian countries to study the Indian languages, nor do we come into the civilized world to publish them, and to be made responsible for errors in writing them. I can well understand how Mr. Hunter gave you, to a certain extent, a different version on different days; he, like myself, having learned a little of fifteen or twenty different languages, would necessarily be at a loss, with many of his Indian words, to know what tribe they belong to; and our partial knowledge of so many tongues involves us at once in a difficulty not unlike the confusion at Babel, and disqualifies his responses or mine, as authority for such works as I hope you are preparing for the world. With these views (though I profess to be the property of the world, and ready and pleased to communicate anything that I have distinctly learned of the Indians and their modes), I must beg to decline giving you the translation of a single word; and at the same time to express a hope that you may verbally, or in the valuable works which you are soon to bequeath to posterity, leave a repentant word at least, to remove the censure which you say you were the first to cast upon Hunter, and which is calculated to follow him to the grave.'" His Royal Highness was much interested and somewhat amused by this narrative, and agreed with me, that such men as M. Duponceau, and others, to whom the world is to look for a full and correct account of the Indian languages of America, should go themselves to the wigwams of the Indians, and there, in their respective tribes, open the books in which to record their various vocabularies, rather than sit at home and trust to the ignorant jargon that can be caught from the trapper and the trader and the casual tourists who make flying visits through the Indian countries. He related to me many curious anecdotes of poor Hunter, and as I left him enjoying his k'nick-k'neck through his Indian pipe, he said to me, "Your name, sir, will be familiar at my door, and I shall be delighted to see you again at the same hour, whenever you feel disposed to come."