The summer residence of these ingenious artisans promoted a great intimacy between the females of the vicinity and the Indian women, whose sagacity and comprehension of mind were beyond belief. It is a singular circumstance, that though they saw the negroes in every respectable family not only treated with humanity, but cherished with parental kindness, they always regarded them with contempt and dislike, as an inferior race, and would have no communication with them. It was necessary then that all conversations should be held, and all business transacted with these females, by the mistress of the family. In the infancy of the settlement, the Indian language was familiar to the more intelligent inhabitants, who found it very useful, and were, no doubt, pleased with its nervous and emphatic idiom, and its lofty and sonorous cadence. It was, indeed, a noble and copious language, when one considers that it served as the vehicle of thought to a people, whose ideas and sphere of action we should consider as so very confined. ------- CHAP. XIII. Progress of knowledge—Indian manners. Conversing with those interesting and deeply-reflecting natives, was, to thinking minds, no mean source of entertainment. Communication soon grew easier, for the Indians had a singular facility in acquiring other languages—the children, I well remember, from experimental knowledge, for I delighted to hover about the wigwam, and converse with those of the Indians, and we very frequently mingled languages. But to return: whatever comfort or advantage a good and benevolent mind possesses, it is willing to extend to others. The mother of my friend, and other matrons, who, like her, experienced the consolations, the hopes, and the joys of Christianity, wished those estimable natives to share in their pure enjoyments.