But to return to our Sachems, from whom we have too long digressed; when they arrived at Albany, they did not, as might be expected, hasten home to communicate their discoveries, or display their acquisitions. They summoned a congress there, not only of the elders of their own nation, but the chiefs of all those with whom they were in alliance. This solemn meeting was held in the Dutch church. In the present depressed and diminished state of these once powerful tribes, so few traces of their wonted energy remain, that it could scarce be credited, were I able to relate with what bold and flowing eloquence they clothed their conceptions; powerful reasoning, emphatic language, and graceful action, added force to their arguments; while they persuaded their adherents to renounce all connexion with the tribes under the French influence; and form a lasting league, offensive and defensive, with that great queen, whose mild majesty had so deeply impressed them; and the mighty people whose kindness had gratified, and whose power had astonished them, whose populous cities swarmed with arts and commerce, and in whose floating castles they had rode safely over the ocean. I have seen a volume of the speeches of these Mohawks preserved by Colonel Schuyler; they were literally translated, so that the native idiom was preserved; which, instead of appearing uncouth, seemed to add to their strength and sublimity. When Mr. Schuyler returned from England, about the year 1709, his niece Catalina, the subject of this narrative, was about seven years old; he had a daughter and sons, yet this child was early distinguished above the rest for docility, a great desire of knowledge, and an even and pleasing temper; this her uncle early observed. It was at that time very difficult to procure the means of instruction in those inland districts; female education of consequence was conducted on a very limited scale; girls learnt needle-work (in which they were indeed both skilful and ingenious) from their mothers and aunts; they were taught too at that period to read, in Dutch, the Bible and a few Calvinistic tracts of the devotional kind. But in the infancy of the settlement few girls read English; when they did, they were thought accomplished; they generally spoke it, however imperfectly, and few were taught writing. This confined education precluded elegance; yet, though there was no polish, there was no vulgarity. The dregs of the people, who subside to the bottom of the mass, are not only degraded by abject poverty, but so utterly shut out from intercourse with the more enlightened, and so rankling with envy at feeling themselves so, that a sense of their condition gradually debases their minds; and this degradation communicates to their manners, the vulgarity of which we complain. This more particularly applies to the lower class in towns; for mere simplicity, or even a rustic bluntness, I would by no means call vulgarity.