It is true the exhibition of perseverance and strength, on the part of the American savage, is not constant but casual. It is only when fierce passions stimulate him to exertion, that he puts forth all his powers. Nevertheless the casual exhibition of this strength and perseverance proves, that the opposite qualities are not essential to his nature; and seemingly warrants the conclusion that the indolence and want of energy which mark his character, are the results of that peculiar system of training to which he has been subjected. Of the persevering speed of the Americans many instances are on record. Adair mentions a Chikkasah warrior who ran through woods and over mountains, three hundred computed miles in a day and a half and two nights. “I have known the Indians,” he observes in another place, “to go a thousand miles for the purpose of revenge, in pathless woods, over hills and mountains, through huge cane swamps, exposed to the extremities of heat and cold, the vicissitudes of seasons, to hunger and thirst. Such is their over-boiling revengeful temper, that they utterly contemn all these things as imaginary trifles, if they are so happy as to get the scalp of the murderer or enemy to satisfy the craving ghosts of their deceased relations.” Robertson, in the notes to his History of America, states that “M. Godin le Jeune, who resided fifteen years among the Indians of Puru and Quito, and twenty years in the French Colony of Cayenne, in which there is a constant intercourse with the Galibis, and other tribes on the Orinoco, observes, that the vigour of constitution among the Americans is exactly in proportion to their habits of labour. The Indians, in warm climates, such as those on the coasts of the South Sea, on the river of Amazons, and the river Orinoco, are not to be compared for strength with those in cold countries; and yet, says he, boats daily set out from Para, a Portugese settlement on the river of Amazons, to ascend that river against the rapidity of the stream; and with the same crew they proceed to San Pablo, which is eight hundred leagues distant. No crew of white people or even of negroes, would be found equal to a task of such persevering fatigue as the Portugese have experienced; and yet the Indians, being accustomed to this labour from their infancy, perform it.”[2]