This is bad, but a still more melancholy element of decay is the habit of drinking spirituous liquors, which is daily gaining ground among these hapless Americans; this produces an amount of crime and suffering that, even in our own country, could find no parallel; not only is the excitable nature of the Red man stirred to actual madness by these atrocious poisons; but because, unlike his brother of civilized countries, he depends on his own unassisted physical powers for the most immediate and pressing wants of life--no grazier or butcher, no miller or baker, has _he_ to provide for a time against improvidence on his part; from no accommodating “shop” can _his_ wife gain credit for the moment--his family starves at once if his own resources are destroyed; and an eloquent writer of the day has well remarked, that “it is dreadful to reflect on the situation of a poor Indian hunter, when he finds, he knows not why, that his limbs are daily failing him in the chase, that his arrow ceases to go straight to the mark, and that his nerves tremble before the wild animals it was but lately his pride to encounter.” We have been furnished by intelligent eye-witnesses with fearful instances of wrong and outrage committed by the unhappy Indians on each other while under the influence of the poison which we Christians--ah, woe for the profanation!--have bestowed on our Red brothers; but our limits do not permit their insertion. We call the native American, “Indian,” in compliance with established custom; but there is no propriety in the term as applied to these people, who call themselves “Red men,” and nothing else. They are for the most part of robust make and of fair average size, except the Esquimaux inhabitants of the extreme north, who are dwarfish, and the Abipones, natives of the southern extremity of this vast continent, who are of great height; they have prominent features, high cheek-bones, and small deeply set black eyes; their complexion is a cinnamon colour, varying in its shades, and esteemed handsome among themselves in proportion as it is dark, but with a clear, warm, coppery hue, which last they esteem an evidence of the divine favour, for they believe that the Great Spirit loved his Red children better than their white brethren, and so breathed a more vivid life into their veins; a distinction of which the visible sign is the glowing complexion we have alluded to. The meaner vices are held in especial contempt among the yet uncontaminated Indians: slanderers, cowards, liars, _misers_, and _debtors_ who refuse to pay when the means are in their power, are shunned as persons in whose society no respectable man should be seen. On the subject of debt, in particular, Indian notions differ widely from ours. Should his debtor be unable to meet his engagements in consequence of illness or want of success in the chase, he scrupulously conceals the inconvenience this may occasion, and is careful never to name debt in the defaulter’s presence.