Mr. Frederick Whymper, who wrote about the Northwest some twenty years ago, speaking upon this subject, refers to the experience of a Mr. Sproat, a resident of the region near Puget Sound, who employed large numbers of natives as well as whites in manufacturing lumber. Mr. Sproat conducted his large business and the place where it was established on temperance principles; no violence or oppression of any sort was permitted towards the natives. They were in fact better fed, better clothed, and better taught than they had ever been before. It was only after a considerable time that any symptom of a change was observed among the Indians. By and by a listlessness seemed to creep over them, and they “brooded over silent thoughts.” At first they were surprised and bewildered by the presence of the white men, and the machinery and steam vessels which they brought with them. They seemed slowly to acquire a distrust of themselves, and abandoned their old practices and tribal habits, until at last it was discovered that a higher death-rate was prevailing among them. “No one molested them,” says Mr. Sproat; “they had ample sustenance and shelter for the support of life, yet the people decayed. The steady brightness of civilized life seemed to dim and extinguish the flickering light of savageism, as the rays of the sun put out a common fire.” Upon the same subject and people, H. W. Elliott says: “These savages were created for the wild surroundings of their existence; expressly fitted for it, and they live happily in it; change the order of their life, and at once they disappear, as do the indigenous herbs and game before the cultivation of the soil and the domestication of animals.” We shall not comment upon these remarks, though to us it is an extremely interesting subject; the reader must draw his own inference.