This much can be said, without disparagement to the piety of the Netherland church, which had her pastors and teachers at Manhattan, Fort Orange, and various other incipient points of her settlements at an early day. Whatever had been her policy, (and we have paid but little attention to this,) in sending teachers among the Mohegans, the Maquaas and other tribes who resorted to her forts and factories at Albany, and other points of early contact with these simple and warlike men; the English, after the conquest of 1664, appear to have followed in her footsteps, and pursued the same general, gradual and persuasive means, attaching high and deserved value at all points to the influence of European arts and the value of fixed industry. Churches were founded at an early day, among the Mohawks at Caghnawaga, and at Dionderoga at the mouth of Schoharie Creek, better known as Fort Hunter, the latter of which received a present of a set of plate for the communion service, from Queen Ann. Unfortunately for the conversion and civilization of the Indians, they had not a fixed population—they drew their supplies mainly from the chase, gave up a large portion of their time and means to war, and besides moving periodically, at least twice a year, _from_ or _to_ their hunting and planting grounds, they were in a general progress of recession before a civilized population. They shrank before the determined spirit of progress of civilized arts and industry, which elicited resources where the Indian had seen none, and made an industrious use of every acre of tillable ground. But while the silent influence of this progress did much to teach him, by denoting the use of tools and implements of art and agriculture, to improve him in his domicil and its fixtures, and his costume, and to harmonize and fix his mental habits and character, he was not proof against the leading temptation of the times, namely, the free and inordinate use of ardent spirits. From the partial paroxysms of this pernicious indulgence, he rose with less energy to pursue the chase, or follow the war path. The policy of land sales, the distribution of presents as boons from the crown, and the distribution of small sums of coin to the heads of families in the shape of annuities. A system founded in all but the last feature, under James VI, and confirmed under the old confederation, stepped in, as it were, to aid and reinforce him in his means of living, but which in effect, held him away from his hunting grounds, paralyzed his home industry, and supplied him new means of indulging his propensities for liquor and luxuries. That the gospel should not have made a very marked progress under these circumstances, is not surprising.