His speech also, like the preceding ones, was made in English; and all are in better English than many I have read by foreigners of other nations who have had the same advantages of education. “Ladies and Gentlemen:—I enter upon the duties assigned me by the committee of arrangements with much distrust. It is a difficult task at all times to speak in a foreign language, and I fear I shall not succeed to the satisfaction of myself or my audience. “In some respects the present occasion is an extraordinary one—never before did the white man with his women and children meet with the red man and his women and children in a social picnic. It is an occasion to excite our gratitude and make us glad, and I would like for a moment to present the past condition and relationships of the two nations in contrast with the present. “That the red men were the first occupants of the soil is conceded by all. In this we had the start of the white man, perhaps because John Bull and the Dutchman had not been Yankeefied at that time, for we find after this transformation took place the white man had the start of us in every thing! “In 1647 the confederacy of the Six Nations were able to raise 30,000 warriors. They had a regularly organized government, in which the rights of nations were distinctly defined; but the rights of individuals were not defined. War and the sports of the chase were then the pursuits of the red men. Their clothing was made of the skins of the animals they killed in the chase. Their food was the flesh of wild animals, and the corn and vegetables which were raised by the women, and the labor of the lodge was all performed by them. The conquests of the Iroquois had extended far to the south and west, and the name of the Ho-de-no-son-ne was a terror among all the surrounding nations. “They roamed from river to river, and from valley to plain in pursuit of the buffalo, the bear, and the elk, and darted across lakes and rivers in their light canoes to find the beaver and otter, in order to take their furs. At appointed seasons they returned to the council fires of the several nations, for the transaction of public business and to keep the annual feasts. “In 1776, more than a hundred years afterwards, we find them greatly reduced in numbers, though their customs are the same. The Mohawks, who dwelt on the banks of the Hudson, and along the valley which still bears their name, scarcely numbered four hundred souls. The Oneidas, who were situated next west of them, numbered fifteen hundred, and the Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras, about ten thousand, and could raise two thousand warriors.