MY DEAR SIR――I believe that man, as he was created, had a mind in that state of perfection which we can best understand by the term ‘civilized’――that is, capable of discerning the means of gratifying every wish and providing for every want, whether bodily or intellectual, that circumstances brought upon him, until society became so corrupt that the Almighty found it necessary to destroy the whole human race, except Noah and his family, whom he preserved in the ark, and that through them the same civilized mind was transmitted to those that were born to them, and to those who descended from them; and that all the heathen nations (as they are now termed) have fallen off from that state in which their forefathers existed, and that as the local distance increased which divided their several families from the parent stock, so did their minds become more degraded and ignorant, until they arrived at the state in which they are now found, endued with sufficient intellect to enable them to avail themselves of the means which nature has placed around them to supply their bodily wants, but continuing from father to son in the same state of mental ignorance, and devoid of all improvement or intellectual enjoyment. I was first impressed with this view of the heathen nations from finding that the same canoes exist at this time, the same rafts or balzas are seen on the same coasts as were found there when those coasts or islands were first visited by our earliest navigators, although our own ships have been so much improved during the same space of time as to be most sensibly distinguishable.