animals which were to be maintained; and no small expense, in that country, to procure the implements necessary for the purposes of agriculture. In other countries, when a poor man has not wherewithal to begin farming, he serves another, and the reward of his toil enables him to set up for himself. No such resource was open to the Indians, had they even inclined to adopt our modes. No Indian ever served another, or received assistance from any one except his own family. It is inconceivable, too, what a different kind of exertion of strength it requires to cultivate the ground, and to endure the fatigues of the chace, long journeys, &c. To all that induces us to labour they were indifferent. When a governor of New-York was describing to an Indian the advantages that some one would derive from such and such possessions; “Why,” said he, with evident surprise, “should any man desire to possess more than he uses?” More appeared, to his untutored sense, an incumbrance. I have already observed how much happier they considered their manner of living than ours; yet their intercourse with us daily diminished their independence, their happiness, and even their numbers. In the New World, this fatality has never failed to follow the introduction of European settlers; who, instead of civilizing and improving, slowly consume and waste—where they do not, like the Spaniards, absolutely destroy and exterminate the natives. The very nature of even our most friendly mode of dealing with them, was pernicious to their moral welfare; which, though too late, they well understood, and could as well explain. Untutored man, in beginning to depart from that life of exigences, in which the superior acuteness of his senses, his fleetness and dexterity in the chace, are his chief dependence, loses so much of all this before he can become accustomed to, or qualified for our mode of procuring food by patient labour, that nothing can be conceived more enfeebled and forlorn, than the state of the few detached families remaining of vanished tribes, who, having lost their energy, and even the wish to live in their own manner, were slowly and reluctantly beginning to adopt ours. It was like that suspension of life which takes place in the chrysalis of insects, while in their progress towards a new state of being. Alas! the indolence with which we reproach them, was merely the consequence of their commercial intercourse with us; and the fatal passion for strong liquors which resulted from it. As the fabled enchanter, by waving his magic wand, chains up at once the faculties of his opponents, and renders strength and courage useless; the most wretched and sordid trader, possessed of this master-key to the appetites and passions of these hard-fated people, could disarm those he dealt with of all their resources, and render them dependent—nay, dependent on those they scorned and hated. The process was simple: first, the power of sending, by mimic thunder, an unseen death to a